


Fate/merism

by JThistle



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Other, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, Slow Burn, diarmuid comes across as a little bitter at first please bear with me, gender neutral reader meant to be readable for all genders, holy grail war, magic might or might not be in line with previous nasuverse explanations, name blanks, reader is not immune to dia's love spot, there's some mild Gilgamesh -> Diarmuid going on but not enough to warrant it's own character tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-08 10:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JThistle/pseuds/JThistle
Summary: Your family made a deal with the Einzberns to acquire knowledge of the workings of the Holy Grail War and recreated the process with you at the center.Summoning the Servant they chose for you, living the life that they chose for you -- deep down, you know it will only lead to a tragedy the likes of which mankind hasn't since Camelot. But choosing your own fate might lead to a completely different tragedy as you find yourself falling for a doomed knight with a chip on his shoulder and a fake smile just for you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I got a writing productivity app and so far I've written 5.5k of this. We'll see if it keeps up though!
> 
> Anyway, I always feel bad because my works never have as many tags as everyone else's . . . because of this I have to fight the urge to add more tags with random commentary . . . . I tried to keep it to just the basic things that a reader should know coming in, though.
> 
> Name blanks used in this chapter, for those of you who use text-replacers like Interactive Fics and what not: [Name] and [Surname]. I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to use the most common and reliable y/n . . . . .

The moon was nearly full, hanging over your head like an anxious mother at a birthing, waiting for the reassuring weight of her new child to be passed into her arms; and in many ways, this was a birthing -- blood was to be spilled, new life called forth; but the one to hold this newborn would be you, not the anxious moon over your head, and the realization of it all filled you with the pressing weight of lead, so that each step took longer than it should have, so that your procession was slow and languorous, as though you had no where to go, nothing to do, and no reason to be anywhere but these dark, misty woods at this time of night.

 

Ireland, so far, had not been what you’d expected; the tourist guides had talked of a rustic charm, trying to sell the bitter winds and dirt roads as a reminder of times long gone; your imagination had been filled with faerie spirits and doorways to other lands. For the most part, it had been like anywhere else in the world -- certainly, people had their own way of things, but the sun rose and the sun set, and you were still kept indoors, away from prying eyes and anyone who might steal you away, faeries included.

 

But at night, it seemed as though everything had changed; your guards -- your parents hadn’t been able to come, though surely this should have been their responsibility, not yours, since it was their dream, not yours, that was to be fulfilled after tonight -- your guards kept silent, mist crept in from the shores, and the moonlight turned everything around you silver and black, so that it seemed you’d stepped into the halls of the dead rather than a forest, and you were reminded that this was a world where there were consequences, unlike the cloistered life you’d lived until now.

 

You were stepping into a war; you had a say in who lived and who died, and one of those people you doomed could even be yourself.

 

And so your procession wound through the forest, until you reached a point where the magus whom your family had hired to help raise you raised their hand; your guards stopped, but you continued forward until you were at the mage’s side.

 

“Is it here?” you asked; your voice was as quiet as you could make it, and even still it hurt to speak in this silent forest, as though each word, or the slightest sound, were a gunshot or a shriek. The mage nodded; their face was obscured by a hood, as was your own and those of your guards, but their face in particular was one you were used to seeing in a hood, and so you focused on it.

 

Maybe you were afraid of change, after having prayed for it for so long.

 

“I’ll go then,” you said, and stepped passed them; you were stepping under a tangle of tree branches -- rowan, if you remembered correctly. Rowan made up the entire copse of trees you’d been lead too, presumably for protection or because, since magic did not like to pass through such things, it had no choice but to pool there, trapped for centuries by innocent roots and leaves.

 

No one bid you farewell, or good luck, or any sort of encouragement. You left your silent procession behind like ghosts, to find that someone had already prepared a summoning circle -- the metallic odor drifted through the air, mingling with dead leaves and grass like an elusive rot.

 

Rituals like this were a rot on the whole planet, weren’t they? Blood magic, calling to specters long gone, stirring up old feuds and old tragedies as though a single person could stop them from repeating themselves. As if there was ever a tragedy that wasn’t firmly the responsibility of it’s victims, wrought by their own weaknesses and vices and blindness.

 

The word to the spell were in latin, and you didn’t know what they meant -- just that you’d been reciting them for months now, over and over, until they stuck in your head. You weren’t sure how rote memory was supposed to be helpful in magic -- everything you’d ever been taught had relied on visualization -- but perhaps you didn’t need to know what you were saying because you still knew what you were doing.

 

Perhaps you didn’t need to know anything because your magic circuits were nearly the best in the world, if not impossible to surpass. You’d been bred for this, after all. And that was why you were kept up in your tower, away from a world that would deny your talents and existence. That was why you were here now.

 

It didn’t matter what you summoned on this night; you were too powerful for the Holy Grail War you were about to start to have any outcome but one -- everyone would die, and you would be the sole survivor, covered in the blood and dreams of strangers, and you didn’t have to know anything, not what you doing or how, or why. And maybe, when it was all said and done, you’d coat your hands with your own blood too; cast your own life among those of your victims.

 

A tragedy in the making.

 

And you could feel the magic now, picking up around you -- what had been here, yes, but also your own magic, trapped by the rowan trees around you, harbored and guided so that not a bit of it went unused.

 

It was like a thunderstorm, rolling in unexpectedly from the wrong direction, calling to something deep, deep in the ground, or high, high in the air, something only you would be able to recognize -- a storm from your childhood, creating the impossible, only now it was focused, collected into a single point, capable of doing so much more than causing toads to rain from the sky or time to stop for hours over your hometown.

 

You pulled the catalyst from under your cloak; it had grown warm, and now you placed it in the circle of blood, and now you said the words out loud, and you imagined the strength and power of the spirit you were summoning, because you didn’t know what else you were to focus on.

 

You hadn’t been given a name, or a face -- nothing but the catalyst, a tattered piece of ribbon, so old as to have lost it’s color, bleached to the ivory white of the dead and drenched in sorrow; and now it fluttered from your hands, as though it could feel the call home, caught on the tides of your draft of your magic and torn free, back to the world it had belonged too, and as it fluttered you swore you saw it regain it’s color, regain it’s old softness, as though centuries or millenia had been shed from it’s silk.

 

Maybe the spirit saw it too; saw those old memories as though they were yesterday, for a hand reached out of the darkness before anything else, groping until it could catch the ribbon, and slowly a figure became visible in the shadows, clad in somber black, that only made his skin seem to be made of milk and moonlight; and as he became visible, your heart began to pound, as though it had never beat before this moment, and as though, once this man was out of your sight, it never would again.

 

The curve of his cheeks -- round and ruddy, as though he himself were blushing, or as though he’d taken so heavily of the joys of youth that it would forever stain his face -- and the soft brush of his forelock against his brow; the smooth curve of his shoulder, muscles flexing under his clothes as though nothing and no one that you had seen until this moment had ever been alive; the nearly delicate way he shifted, so that each step he took were silent, even in this silent grove, and above all that, his eyes, averted from your own face, and gleaming like the cold of a sunken kingdom, perhaps with unshed tears, or perhaps just as a trick of the magic and the moonlight.

 

He stared at the ribbon in his hand, as though he couldn’t believe it was his own again, and a long moment passed. You didn’t dare to interrupt him, unsure what sort of predicament you would find yourself in if you did, and he was lost deep to his own thoughts. Finally, though, he stirred, shaking himself all over like a man waking from a long, unpleasant sleep. And then he looked at you, and it was your turn to freeze, fixed under his gaze as though he were capable of rendering you undone with nothing but that look, as though in that moment you’d been unmade.

 

And it was with perfect grace that he knelt now, one hand crossing over his chest as though to show fealty, and the other supporting his weight from the side, as though rather than kneeling, he’d simply fallen, and hadn’t the strength to bring himself to rise.

 

“I am Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, summoned forth as the Lancer class servant,” he said, and his voice had the kind of brittle strength of someone who’s pushed themselves for so long that they didn’t know how to stop, “And I ask you this: Are you my Master?”

 

It took a moment for your mind to catch up; you told yourself it was not because of the way your heart still continued to pound, or the way your breath refused to catch itself, and it was certainly not because you’d been half expecting no one at all -- you’d seen, and caused, much more impossible things than just a man appearing out of no where, called back to this world when he should be dead -- and so if it was neither of those things -- and it wasn’t, you wouldn’t let it be -- then it was one thing and one thing only.

 

You hadn’t had to spoke to someone new since you were five years old, and your magic tutor had arrived at the door of your tower, and even if you added all of your guards and your tutor together, there were maybe a dozen words spoken in a week that weren’t about magic.

 

So it was not that you’d fallen in love at first sight -- falling in love with a heroic spirit, who would exist for the duration of the Holy Grail War and not a moment longer, was beyond foolish -- but rather that you had never quite learned how to talk to strangers, and so it took you several tries now.

 

“That. . . that is correct,” you managed, finally, “I am [Name], of the house [Surname], and I am your Master for the duration of the Holy Grail War.”

 

The man bowed his head, and then rose -- gracefully, as though the exhaustion and desperation you felt in him were an illusion -- but no.

 

No, it wasn’t an illusion, you realized with a start, staring at him as he stood there, head still bowed, awaiting orders you had no idea how to give. The feelings emanating off of him were those feelings he tried to push from his mind, and so they were the feelings that were pushed into you through the newly formed bond of Master and Servant -- just like the more familiar bond of a Master and . . .well, a familiar.

 

You held out your hand, doing your best to smile. It was not an action you were used to.

 

“Diarmuid Ua Duibhne,” you said, “Come. It is a long road home.”

 

He stared at your hand for a long moment; it was difficult to make sense of the emotions coursing through your bond together, but you could feel his longing and regret most clearly, so that even when he took your hand it was not as satisfying as it would have been.

 

Physical contact had been something you’d longed for all your life, and it was only now that you realized how much of a burden it could be. Not because you weren’t happy to hold his hand as you lead him back to your guards and your magus, but because you could feel his anxieties and bitterness coursing through him with each beat of your shared heart, and there was nothing you could do for him but to act as though you’d done this a thousand and one times before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had to edit a scene in order for it to make more sense, and I thought it would be a trial, but it was actually really simple to fix, so here's a look into what Dia's gonna be like for this fic~!

Your hand was warm in his, and he found, with a start, that it was something he had grown disused to. Was it that he had never gotten into the habit of touching Grainne, or that at some point he’d stopped thinking of anyone else but his liege? Or maybe the years of being dead, which he hadn’t experienced but which he had some instinctive knowledge of granted to him by the Grail, that left him cold down to his bones?

 

Maybe he’d spent many years this way, maybe no years at all -- his head spun around in circles trying to lift the fog of his summoning from him, but the mana of his new Master burned bright under his skin, as though he had a fever. He wondered if he could even take his spiritual form like this, or if it would simply cause him to stop being “Diarmuid” and be something else completely.

 

But you continued on ahead of him, serene and ethereal, as though he weren’t being lead into a war but into those lands of his Loathly Lady, who he’d almost been able to forget in Grainne, except for that ribbon, which was now clutched in his other hand.

 

You didn’t speak -- speaking, in fact, didn’t seem to come easily to you. This was not unusual, though -- no matter how much he liked to push the thought of it to the back of his mind, his love spot had an undeniable sway over the course of his life -- and he was glad of the silence. Not that it afforded him much of an opportunity to sort through his thoughts and memories, which would only come with time and considerable physical exertion, but that for the time being, it felt like the world had stopped, as though time had decided not to move forward, and he simply was, without any memories at all.

 

Soon, the forest gave way to dirt paths, and then to dirt roads, and finally to the thatch houses of a small village, one that would have been a familiar sight even in his life, but for the bikes and cars that occasionally interrupted the road, parked in front of these houses and glinting in the moonlight like swords, familiar not because he’d seen them a hundred thousand times before, but because the Grail, wherever it might have been, told him they were a common artifact of the human world now.

 

You did not speak as your small procession, Diarmuid in tow, entered a tidy inn, and you did not speak as you were left to bring him up with you to your room -- rooms that he would presumably share, and a bed that hopefully he would not. He had no need of rest, and if your unabated mana were any indication, there was hardly a need to conserve energy, as even now it continued to pour into him, a storm glad of a harbor, heedless of the ships it would destroy on the way.

 

It was only after you had shut the door behind the both of you that you spoke, and he was surprised at the sound of your voice. While his thoughts were preoccupied with nothing and everything at once, you seemed to have come to some sort of conclusion, because you spoke with a quiet dignity, no trace of your earlier stumbling over words.

 

“We’ll be traveling in the morning,” you said, “So there’s no reason to stay up late. I’ll shower and then retire for the night. You’re free to do the same.”

 

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and you stared at him for a moment. Part of him was afraid that you’d ask to shower together -- he’d had worse things proposed to him without warning, like the desertion of his liege and companions and family, and suspected that there was worse you could demand of him in any case -- but a moment later, your cheeks reddening unexpectedly, you managed to stammer out, “Should you like to go first or . . . .?”

 

The question caught him by surprised, and he wasn’t completely sure why. Fionn would never have asked it, of course, but his relationship with you was not his relationship with Fionn, either -- he was simultaneously your retainer and your guest, so how to treat him must have been weighing on your mind.

 

“I’d like to settle in a bit more,” he said, deciding that you probably wanted the shower more than he did at this time, and was rewarded with your quick retreat, which could only confirm his suspicions.

 

And it was only once you were gone, squirreled away in the bath, that he let himself sigh and cross the room to the second bed, nearly collapsing as he sat, and curled over himself to put his head in his hands.

 

Why did it feel like so much had happened? Was it simply the realization that years of his life had been a lie? Or was it something more than that -- instinctively, he knew that the Grail had called his soul forth before, and perhaps it was the weight of those battles that he shouldered now, though he had no recollection. Had he succeeded then, where he’d failed in life? Had he been able to fight as an honorable man, to shake off the haunting melody of love entirely, and devote his life to his duties the way he’d been meant to?

 

With a sigh, he came back to his surroundings, looked up at the ceiling, and allowed himself to fall back on the bed, staring at the humble walls that surrounded him.

 

He wouldn’t make the same mistake this time.

 

He wouldn’t fall in love with his Master, or anyone sworn to his Master, or their enemies; nor would he let any of those people fall in love with him.

 

It was in this way that Diarmuid Ua Duibhne swore off of love, not for the first time and not for the last. And it was in this way that he found himself drifting off to sleep, though as a heroic spirit he had little need for rest.

 

And so it was like this that he woke to find you staring down at him with an unreadable expression.

 

He hastened to sit up, thankful that at the very least he was fully dressed, which spared you both any awkwardness.

 

“My liege,” he said, and as soon as he was sitting he was rising to his feet, if only to drop into a kneel properly, “I--”

 

“You must have been tired,” you broke in; the words seemed hasty and thick, as though you’d said them before knowing what you were going to say, and he found himself looking up at you as you continued to stare down at him. He didn’t think you were mad -- your eyes were wide, as though shocked to find him that way rather than disappointed. You staggered back a few steps, and then a few more, until you were able to lean against the wall, one hand pressing against your heart.

 

Had you been trying something on him in his sleep?

 

“Forgive me, my liege,” he said, “But that is no excuse for my negligence.”

 

You seemed to be considering this; your lips formed a small “o”, and your eyes traveled over him, and then over the bed, and then finally to the open window, where it seemed to register what he meant.

 

“Don’t worry,” you said, waving a hand in the air, dismissively; if you were trying for a regal action, you failed, “The Holy Grail War hasn’t started yet, and we’ve summoned you pretty far from where it’s going to happen.”

 

Though he wasn’t sure how you could be so certain of being the first to summon anyone, he supposed it would be hard to argue about the location; he knew too little of magecraft to deny it, in any case.

 

Still, he couldn’t bring his shoulders to relax, not with you in the same room. This awful tension had been with him since Grainne had called on him to steal her away, and he suspected it would persist far longer than this battle as well.

 

A permanent scar, more lasting than any romance they’d shared together. Perhaps the real Diarmuid, the man he was meant to be, harbored no such pains; perhaps, even being betrayed by Fionn in his last moments -- that was wrong, though.

 

Fionn hadn’t betrayed him. He had betrayed Fionn long before jealousy had stayed his lord’s hand.

 

“In any case,” you said, “It’s your turn to shower, right? I’ll be going to bed, so take as long as you’d like.”

 

It occurred to him that you were in your night clothes, and despite himself, he hastened away from your side. If what you said was true -- and you had little reason to lie -- it was fine that way, wasn’t it? As he shut the bathroom door between the two of you, it was fine -- there was nothing that could go wrong.

 

But the memory of your face when he first opened his eyes, fingers clutched around a ribbon that had once been green but was now a pale ivory, bleached by sunlight and time -- the memory of your face as he was summoned -- even if you’d done nothing to act on it, it filled his heart with dread and his head with doubt.

 

He was a warrior who’d betrayed his lord and run away with his bride; and even if, at the time, he’d believed it possible to have everything, honor and love and glory and camaraderie, he’d been proven wrong; so why was he now summoned before someone who had fallen for the love spot’s curse so quickly? Why was he to serve a Master who had already fallen in love with him?

 

Was he being given honor and love on a silver platter? Even if he were the naive youth he’d once been, he would not have believed it, and now he knew what it meant to try and have everything.

 

What sort of tragedy had he walked into? What sort of fate had Grainne bound him to so many years ago? For honor and romance to be so tangled up into each other that there was no pulling one from the other even as it destroyed everything he held dear?

 

Even the hot water from the shower was not enough to defuse his thoughts; he scowled at the bathroom tiles as steam rose around him.

 

It wasn’t good to get this angry.

 

It wasn’t good to be bitter.

 

Hadn’t he learned anything about gratitude yet? Or was that his fatal flaw in life -- to always be looking for more, never satisfied by what was at his side?

 

You didn’t deserve a knight like him. Any of his fellows would have been a better choice -- but of course, it wasn’t like you’d had any choice in the matter at all, was it?

 

Finally, it seemed like the stress was too much, and his mind simply gave up on worrying at the matter; he inspected the inn’s offering of travel sized soaps and shampoos, still closed -- it seemed you’d brought your own with you when you traveled, and while he didn’t touch the bottles, he did find himself memorizing the scent and brand before he made use of what had been provided by the establishment.

 

He hadn’t smelled this fine and clean in a long time; and as he busied himself with his shower, he could almost imagine that the person he’d be seeing as he left the bathroom would be one of his fellow knights; that he’d gone on a grand quest, and everything bad that had ever happened to him had been a dream.

 

He hadn’t thought of what he’d wear when he got out of the shower, though, and had to make do with the clothes he’d been wearing before; it was unlikely they were too dirty, though, being made mostly of spirit energy and only used for the short walk back to the village.

 

He was still drying his hair as he came back into the room; light spilled from the bathroom into the darkness, and he found himself moving quietly, hoping not to wake you. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could make out your form, asleep on top of the covers of the bed opposite the one he’d sat on earlier.

 

He left the bathroom door open as he crossed the room, towel slung over his shoulder, and crouched down next to you. The memory of how you’d taken his hand earlier flitted through his mind -- it had not been the action of a lovesick fool.

 

He was not ready to say he’d misjudged you, though; letting down his guard like that would be too much. Instead, he could only vow to act with honor -- to bring you glory on the battlefield and treat you with the deference you were owed as his liege.

 

He could do his best to be the kind of knight you deserved, whether that was one better than he, or exactly what the grail had given you. For now that meant tucking you in so you wouldn’t catch cold, and making sure the window was fastened properly. Straightening, he slid his arms beneath your shoulders and knees as gently as he was able, and lifted you up, cradling you against his shoulder so he could pull the linens out from under you, before settling you back down again. Once you were settled against the pillows, still fast asleep, he pulled the covers up and tucked them neatly around your body.

 

It had been a long time since he’d tucked anyone in, but he didn’t give himself time to linger over the memories, instead crossing to the window and fastening it. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to try to sleep, quite yet -- but if what you said was true, then it would be better to rest while he could. No matter how powerful your magic was, there had to be an end to it eventually, and it was best not to push you beyond your limits.

 

So he crawled into bed, and closed his eyes, and resisted the urge to toss and turn until morning.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna have a lot of fun with the love spot over the course of this story.

The tumult of Diarmuid's emotions had diminished somewhat, after a good night's rest. He even seemed less skittish as he joined you for breakfast the next day, though something seemed to be weighing on his mind. Even though you suspected he wouldn't speak up unless you invited it, somehow, you were at a loss as to whether to do so would be pushy, or otherwise unwelcome -- and even if it were welcome, you weren't certain it was something you would be able to handle. While you had an advantage with Diarmuid because of the Holy Grail's magic, you'd never been very good with people.

 

So the two of you ate in peace, still sequestered in your room; Diarmuid seemed pleased with the inn's selection of traditional foods. Like many things in this small town, it was geared towards tourists, and so rather than doing what was modern or trendy, the inn's owners had settled into a comfortable imitation of the past. You hadn't appreciated it on your arrival -- after all, what was the point of learning more about the world when you would simply be shuffled off back to your tower the moment your parents got the chance? --but seeing it ease the heart of your new companion gave it a certain charm to you as well.

 

You'd woke up smelling him on your sheets, though you doubted anything scandalous had happened. It was an odd feeling -- embarrassing and pleasing all at once, so that your whole body seemed overwhelmed every time you got a whiff of pine or smoke, even though, surely, not every pine tree in Ireland smelled like pine because of him, and given that there was a fireplace in your room -- already lit due to Herrington's diligence -- you doubted that Diarmuid was the only one who smelled of smoke today either.

 

And yet -- and __yet__ , "We'll be departing this afternoon to go to London, which is where the Grail War is to take place."

 

The words were comforting to say; focusing on what had brought the two of you together kept you grounded, rather than being whisked away on some strange daydream. Diarmuid said nothing in response, but he nodded; it may have been that he had nothing to say, or that his mouth was full, but you pressed on without waiting for his response -- he could stop you if he needed to, after all, "By the time we return, I'm sure there will be one or two other people who have been chosen by the Grail, at least. I'm unlikely to be able to travel with you beyond that point, however. Even given the current circumstances. . . ."

 

Diarmuid swallowed, holding up one hand. You paused, but all he had to say was, "I wouldn’t ask you to."

 

Of course, in stories, knights were eager to prove themselves to those they served, rather than demanding a show of worth from those who were unlike themselves. Thinking back, you supposed that had to come from somewhere, but you were still a little surprised.

 

Diarmuid didn't seem to notice; he resumed eating, eyes downcast as though to indicate meekness.

 

It took you a moment to find your thoughts again, especially as he glanced at you, and you found you had to divert your attention to the window in order to avoid being completely distracted. London. . . .

 

"I'm under house arrest," you said, bluntly, "The last time I left the house, there was a bit of an incident, and so the Clock Tower has insisted I stay within my family's residence at all times."

 

You didn’t mention that you'd only been eight at the time, because if you did it would surely turn into an awkward session of you dumping all of your troubles onto a stranger who hadn't asked, and you didn't want to be the kind of person who did things like that. And, though part of you wished he would, Diarmuid didn't ask, as though to respect your earlier silence. A silent agreement seemed to have taken place, but you wondered what kind of agreement it would turn out to be in the long run.

 

After he had a chance to mull it over, Diarmuid asked, "I take it your . . . Herrington will accompany me instead?"

It hadn't been part of the plan, and you disliked the idea of your magic instructor accompanying your Servant out and about. It wasn't that you didn't trust Herrington, or that you doubted their ability to protect themself, but rather . . . .

 

Jealousy, maybe?

 

"If that's your wish," you said, somewhat grudgingly, "But you will also have the freedom to go as you please. Should you need me, I won't have any issue focusing on where you are."

 

It wasn't like your physical prowess was what made you necessary, after all. Anything you could do in person, you could do from within your family's wards. House arrest was just the Clock Tower's way of reassuring itself, and maybe of punishing you for being a child who was more powerful than many of it's masters.

 

"I understand," Diarmuid replied. You weren’t sure if he was used to the kind of power you were talking about -- if it had been common place for him during his life -- or if he simply didn't understand what you were implying, but you were glad that he didn't ask any further questions.

 

"Then the first order of business will be finding the other Masters," you said, "I'll leave the details to you."

 

Diarmuid watched you silently as you poured cream into your morning tea, but didn't offer any further insight. Still, you felt something, under the current of mana that bound the two of you -- wariness, perhaps, or perhaps that same thin river of anxiety that had driven you to push him to shower the night before.

 

He had certainly seemed better this morning, but now you wondered if you'd been selfish. If you hadn't had so much experience with your familiar back home, you might have doubted it was anyone's anxieties but your own.

 

Breathing deeply, you took one scalding sip of tea before resuming your briefing, "I believe my parents will also want you to coordinate with the Church. They'll be sending an official to oversee the process, and I won't be able to meet them in person, so I'm sure it would be best if you were to do so in my stead. That way they know we're not pulling the wool over their eyes, right?"

 

Perhaps you sounded a bit naive; when you raised your eyes, Diarmuid had raised an eyebrow at your remark. However, he didn’t say anything, until you finally set your tea down, "Something is troubling you? Please speak your mind. I don't have any experience with these things."

 

His golden eyes rested on your fingers as they curled around the warm mug, and it seemed to be with great difficulty that he raised them to your face, "I believe it would be wiser to have the overseer visit you in your residence. That would keep me from being an easy target, and I'd have the advantage of familiarizing myself with the terrain before any possible hostilities."

 

You supposed it shouldn't be strange for him to be mistrustful of the Church -- Ireland had been a pagan country far longer than England, and he'd likely grown up with a myriad of different gods. It was even possible, you supposed, that he had some personal connection to a specific deity, though without a name of your future Servant, you hadn't been able to do much preliminary research.

 

Actually, you hadn't been able to do any; the trip, and indeed the entire Holy Grail War, had been a bit of a surprise, flung upon you at the last minute your parents were prone to do, so that you'd barely had any time to memorize the incantation.

 

"I believe the Church is considered neutral ground," you ventured, "But I can have Herrington look into the matter."

 

Diarmuid had long since settled his eating utensils to the side, and the innkeeper looked quite ready to bring him an additional plate all on her own, pleased to have such a strapping young man dining in today. Actually, it hadn't taken long at all for DIarmuid to become something of a son to her, though you kept picking up on an unexpected wariness, as though he fully anticipated her to have dark intentions hidden away.

 

He was a hero of this nation; it seemed strange that he would be so ill at ease, and you couldn't help but wonder how he would feel when you traveled to new terrain entirely.

 

"Is Herrington your retainer?" he asked, finally; there was little emotion in his voice; it could have passed for idle curiosity, but something stirred in your heart -- something that you weren't sure how to name. Were you hoping for something, with that question? As though taking an interest in future allies were the same as taking an interest in your personal affairs!

 

Of course, Herrington was, more or less, the extent of your personal affairs -- but that was hardly something Diarmuid could have known, "They're my only friend."

 

If you felt a little possessive, saying it, that wasn't any of Diarmuid's business either. You wouldn't get in the way of their business, and you were allowed to feel possessive of the one human being you'd been close to in the last two decades or so.

 

Actually, you were allowed to feel anything you wanted to feel, even if feelings were rarely about "wanting" and more often about something completely out of your control. You were under no obligation to tamp down on your emotions -- just as long as they didn't rule your actions.

 

That was how it was, right? In the palace of your own mind, you could harbor any number of hurricanes, just as long as you were their only victim.

 

Diarmuid seemed to have accepted your silence past that matter as a signal that the conversation was closed, and stood. Perhaps he sensed the pending arrival of more breakfast foods, and wished to avoid the attention.

 

"I will patrol the area," he said, which you could only assume was code for, __I'm taking a walk__ , because there was little point in familiarizing himself with an area he was going to leave behind before any real battle took place.

 

"I'll call for you when it's time to leave," you said, amiably, and managed a weak smile, "I apologize for my disposition."

 

He seemed unsure how to respond to that; it wasn't a surprise -- neither his body language, nor his expression, nor the psychic bond between the two of you gave that impression -- but he seemed to find it difficult to fit into his idea of you. He stared down at you, lips pursed together in thought,and you found yourself looking up at him, admiring the way the sun fell over his eyes and cheeks, casting shadows over his mouth, lining him in a golden halo.

 

You weren't sure it was wholly okay to look -- did that count as acting on your emotions? -- but you weren't quite sure what else to do in this situation.

 

At last he started, "You have nothing to apologize for, my liege. We . . . both have our secrets."

 

There was a wistfulness to the way he said that -- as though the shared likeness of having secrets was bittersweet -- that made your breath catch in your throat, and so you forced yourself to smile, returning to your breakfast tea with all the grace you could muster.

 

He walked out without another word, and you allowed yourself a deep sigh as you heard the door close behind him. Almost immediately, the innkeeper hurried towards your table.

 

"Something the matter, dear?" she asked; the question caught you by surprise, and your whole body jumped; the mug tumbled from your hands, crashing to the table and spilling tea everywhere -- over your fingers, over the edge of the table and into your lap, down to the floor. It was still quite hot -- you'd been sipping at it slowly because anything more was sure to scald your tongue, and the unexpected heat caused tears to prick at your eyes.

 

"I-I'm sorry," you stammered, unsure if you were apologizing for the spilled tea, or if you were apologizing for not quite knowing how to react to someone speaking to you. The innkeeper seemed quite astonished -- she was an older woman, perhaps her late forties, with her curly brown hair caught up in a messy bun, and she seemed the practical sort.

 

Dimly, it occurred to you that Herrington had ordered your breakfast before you'd even arrived, and you felt uncomfortably snobbish, the sort of person who doesn't deign to interact with the locals. Even as you'd observed her interactions with Diarmuid, you hadn't spoken to her -- it had seemed to forward at the time, but now you wondered, as she hastened to fetch a cloth and bucket of sanitizer, if you had seemed aloof, condescendingly amused by her fascination with your companion.

 

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she was saying now, as she patted down your hands and lap with napkins, "Oh, I'm so so sorry. That didn't burn you, did it, dear?"

 

"N-no, I'm . . ." you weren’t sure how to finish that sentence. It was almost bizarre, now that you were faced with this encounter, how easily you’d been able to speak to Diarmuid. Of course, on some level, though, he was the same as you were -- existing only in this world for some eldritch, unknowable purpose, a cog in a mystical machine. He didn't have a real life to compare you to, not anymore.

 

But this woman surely did -- she surely had friends or family that she would gossip to later, and your odd behavior surely would stand out when she did. The thought made heat rise in your cheeks, and you hurried to at least do your part in cleaning up, "I'm quite fine, I just didn't expect . . . I didn't hear you come up."

 

You hadn't expected anyone to acknowledge you; they hadn't at the airport, with Herrington taking care of the practical matters that you frankly didn't fully understand, and they hadn't when Herrington had rented a car, or when your party had checked into this inn.

 

For the last day and a half, you'd simply been content to assume that, because you lived your life as an empty doll, it would go on that way forever, and the thought of that life was suddenly overwhelming; you felt tears prick at your eyes once more, so that the innkeeper, a kindhearted woman if you'd ever met one, patted at your hands gently with a cool napkin -- dipped hastily in Diarmuid's abandoned water glass.

 

The thought that his lips had been on that glass, and that now, indirectly, they'd been on your hands, caused a new kind of heat to rise past your cheeks and all the way to the tips of your ears, and with a groan you buried your head in your hands.

 

"I'm so sorry," you said again, "I'm such a mess."

 

"Oh, I can't blame you," the innkeeper said, "A man like that gets people distracted, doesn't he?"

 

She laughed a small, nostalgic laugh even as a cold shiver ran down your spine, and your brain froze up, trying to decode what had happened. Had she bespelled you? What was that uncomfortable feeling in your chest?

 

She didn't seem to notice as you reached up, pressing a hand to your heart; she just continued merrily on, "Why, if I were twenty years younger, I'm sure I'd be making a fool of myself over him! But don't worry too much, dearie. I saw the way he was looking at you."

 

And with a strange, half-hearted pat on your hand, she contented herself with gathering her rags and bucket of sanitizer -- which smelled strongly of bleach, and now you suddenly found that alarming, and bustling off back to her work.

 

What was this strange feeling? You found yourself zoning out as you kept one hand pressed over your heart, wondering if, actually, it was a more serious ailment. Were you going to die? Had the exertion of the summoning been too much for you after all, and now you were to fail your parents' expectations of you and . . . you weren't sure what they'd do to you if you died, or if it would matter in the long run, but . . . .

 

"Where's Diarmuid?" a familiar voice asked; with a cry, you leapt up, turning to embrace Herrington without any further encouragement. They awkwardly patted your shoulder as you buried your face in their shirt.

 

"Herrington!" you whined, "I don't know what to do! She just came up and started talking to me and now I think I'm cursed or maybe I'm dying. . . Or. . . ."

 

Herrington sighed, an exasperated sound they'd made frequently over the course of your long relationship, "People talk to other people, [Name]. It's okay. You're not dying, and I doubt she's even a mage, much less inclined to do you harm."

 

"But what if she's a faerie creature?" you asked, and were rewarded by Herrington reaching up to pinch both of your cheeks, hard.

 

"What makes you think she cursed you?" they demanded, "Did she say anything strange? Look at you funny? Are you just being like this because you were left alone for too long?"

 

"She said Diarmuid was distracting," you replied. There was a small pause, and then Herrington let go of your cheeks in order to cover their mouth with one hand. They seemed to be stifling laughter, and even went so far as to turn away from you, the baggy sleeve of their green hoodie covering their fingers as well as their mouth.

 

"You're jealous," they said, finally.

 

Their words stung; of course, it probably did sound like jealousy, but you didn't want to admit that you knew it wasn't because you'd been feeling jealous off and on all day, so you blurted out, "No, it's not! Why would I be jealous?"

 

Herrington seemed to be having a hard time holding back their laughter as they turned back to you and reached out with their free hand, patting you on the head while you pouted at them.

 

"It's okay to admit it," they said, "Diarmuid is very handsome, and gentlemanly, and he's like your own personal knight -- it's okay! It's natural to feel jealous when other people gawk at him, isn't it?"

 

Yeah, maybe Herrington was right; hearing them say that only caused the strange, piercing sensation in your heart to get worse, and now that you were thinking of them and Diarmuid again, it seemed reasonable that you'd been jealous.

 

Still, you didn't want to admit it now, when you'd been so quick to deny it, "It's inappropriate. I'm his Master and he's my Servant. It's none of my business what he gets up to in his free time."

 

Herrington covered their mouth again, almost gleefully, and you scowled, "Stop that! I'm not jealous! I'm not!"

 

"Scandalous," was Herrington's only reply, "Come on. It's time for us to get going, so you'd better call him back."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mean to take a couple days off, but I did . . . . but I got back on track pretty quickly, so I'm proud of myself! By the way, these chapters are largely unedited. If I catch a typo or what not as I'm reading through them again (I do that sometimes *sweats*) I'll go ahead and fix it, but right now I'm focusing on getting the words out. . . you could consider it a NaNoWriMo that I started independently of the actual NaNoWriMos!
> 
> (If you're participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and reading this, congratulations, good luck, and get back to work, okay?)

Diarmuid thought his first time on a plane would be a little more overwhelming, but it had been a quiet affair -- other than the flight attendant seeming to attend to him specifically whenever she got the chance, and a few looks from a score of other passengers -- things that made him wish, rather desperately, your family had invested in a private airline.

 

Herrington gave him a strange look when he said something about it, jokingly -- he believed his words had been, __"__ I'm surprised we're traveling so publicly."

 

"We're not rich," they'd responded, and shrugged one delicate shoulder. He'd been taken aback not just by the dismissive tone -- Herrington was much colder with others than you were, though it seemed at first it should be the opposite. You didn't speak unless spoken too, and with your array of guards, all dressed now in crisp black suits with mirrored sunglasses and their shaven heads bared to the world, there weren't a great many people who seemed inclined to speak to you. And yet he knew you to be soothing, the way a spring day is.

 

Herrington was a bit difficult to grasp, in contrast -- they were bold, certainly, even though their strange attire would have him believe they were the shifty sort. They kept their face covered, even now in broad daylight, and only occasionally their pale fingers snuck beyond the sleeves of their dark green sweater; they did not seem to care one bit what the world thought of them, and they never seemed to question their right to be wherever they were, but by the end of the flight, it also seemed to Diarmuid that, other than you yourself, they had no respect for anyone else.

 

Of course, their devotion to you was unquestionable, and he felt a creeping strain of jealousy that he did his best to suppress. It was good if your retainers were as loyal to you as Herrington seemed to be -- and though you'd called them your friend, and they behaved casually around you enough, he doubted they were any such thing. No, the deference Herrington showed you was that of a loyal knight, commendable, even admirable, but not what you'd mistaken it for.

 

And that caused Diarmuid more confusion than he'd have liked it too. Of course it was sad -- you were clearly the lonely sort, aching for the human contact he still found himself taking for granted, as he'd spent the flight playing cards with a couple of your guards, while you spent it staring dreamily out the window.

 

They'd introduced themselves as Gin and Rummy, which he thought was a kind of inside joke between them; Gin was a skinny fellow who looked much younger than he had to be, and Diarmuid almost suspected he stuck to the mirrored sunglasses because they gave him a more dignified and experienced air. Rummy was clearly older, in his fifties or sixties, with the sort of stocky build of someone who'd taken pride in their body before age started to soften their muscles, and then looked in the mirror one day and decided none of it mattered. He hadn't shaved his head as recently as Gin had, and the hair had begun to grow back in a gray down that left him looking like the friendliest of your guards.

 

And over the course of the flight, Diarmuid found himself well acquainted with them, while he doubted you even knew their names, much less that they went around calling themselves Gin and Rummy. It seemed backwards, somehow -- you'd been amiable enough at breakfast. Hardly someone it was difficult to approach, in any case.

 

He didn't ask your guards about it, though, and he didn't ask Herrington -- as though he was afraid of slipping up and showing too much interest in someone who was clearly off limits, and not for the first time. Instead, he simply found himself watching you, his eyes lingering on you at odd times, and his ears straining to stay half focused on you, and half focused on the conversation at hand.

 

Both pursuits were pointless; you occupied yourself with solitary tasks when you weren't looking out the window, and since Herrington was occupied with some sort of personal project, you spoke to no one.

 

By the end of the flight,a little over an hour later, he was beginning to understand your strange frostiness when he'd asked about working with Herrington that morning, but not much else.

 

Still, the trip to your family's residence in the country was not quite over, and Herrington went about retrieving a rented car, leaving you to your own devices in the lobby, and DIarmuid found himself sitting down beside you. After the plane ride, it was a relief to stretch his legs out in front of him instead of keeping them curled up nearly to his chest.

 

"You don't seem to be on friendly terms with your companions," he offered. You didn't start -- though you hadn't acknowledged his presence earlier, and he'd half expected it. Instead, you neatly folded one corner of a page in the book you were reading, shut the book, and settled it in your lap before giving him a composed smile.

 

"They're not my companions," you replied, "I believe they're security from the Clock Tower. They're on loan for this trip, and will be returning to their regular duties afterwards. I only have Herrington."

 

Diarmuid would kind of miss them, if that were the case -- but it did explain a certain amount of tension in the air at that moment. Rather than keeping an eye out for any trouble, it did seem, now that he was aware of it, that Gin and Rummy were keeping an eye on __you__ , and leaving Foster and Addams to the actual guard duty.

 

Still, if the information being fed to him from the Grail was correct, the Clock Tower was a university. This all seemed rather extensive influence, even if they were considered the primary authority on all things magic in the area.

 

He didn't ask, though -- it was beyond his place, and he kind of relished being a bit difficult about the matter. If you wanted to tell him, you could, but he was going to be the very picture of a loyal knight, regardless.

 

"Four guards really isn't enough," you offered, after a small silence, "And they know it."

 

You seemed a little miffed, and Diarmuid did have to admit his curiosity was piqued, but it was at that moment that Herrington returned from the desk, equipped with keys and a mighty scowl.

 

They did not explain themselves as they stomped outside, but they didn't have to; you unfolded yourself gracefully from the chair and DIarmuid followed suit, and as the two of you left the building you were quickly flanked by your four guards.

 

Or perhaps "warden" was a better term, if you were to be believed.

 

"They didn't need to make everything so difficult," Herrington was complaining; you seemed content to let them rant, as Herrington held open the door for you and allowed you to slide into the backseat of the car. They hastened around to the other side in order to do the same for Diarmuid, but he shook his head, holding a hand up to indicate that he did, in fact, have this under control.

 

You might not have been listening to Herrington much at all, however, because you'd already returned to your book by the time he'd slid into the car beside you; Herrington seemed to have anticipated this, as well, because as soon as they'd slid into the driver's seat, they leaned back, rapping on the ceiling of the car.

 

"You're going to make yourself carsick," they warned, even when you didn't look up. You made very little acknowledge of this -- only a barely audible hum before you turned the page.

 

Diarmuid had to wonder if it was a good read, or if you were simply avoiding the world now that your little foray into another country was over. You did seem tense, though he wasn't sure what exactly gave him that idea, and so did Herrington, who no longer seemed to be playing the role of a mysterious, wise guide and seemed antsy and snippish.

Herrington didn't push the matter, however, and started the car. Diarmuid peered a bit closer at you to make sure you were buckled in, and when he found that you were, simply leaned back, bracing himself for a drive over the cobblestones.

 

It was weird how he felt he'd never driven in a car, and yet knew exactly what to expect; he was unsurprised when it was only a few minutes later that you dog-eared your page again and set the book you'd been so absorbed with into your lap, looking faintly queasy.

 

Herrington didn't seem to notice, and when you caught Diarmuid watching you, you gave him a wan smile.

 

He suddenly remembered that this __would__  be a possible battlegrounds, unlike Ireland had been, and set about looking out the window, trying to familiarize himself with the landscape. When he next glanced at you out the corner of his eye, you had leaned back, closing your eyes and doing your best to mimic sleep.

 

London itself was quickly left behind, making way to countryside, and then rather abruptly into dense forest. Rather than getting less difficult, the road only seemed to get bumpier, causing you to groan at one point in distress.

 

Herrington's only response to this was an almost icy, "I warned you."

 

"Well, I'm not used to traveling like this, am I?" you replied, sourly, "Even if you warned me, I still feel. . . ."

 

Diarmuid found himself staring at you again, not sure how to process this sudden childishness. You, in turn, noticed his staring -- and perhaps the fact that he was perfectly fine, but as a Heroic Spirit, that was to be expected -- and shut your mouth with an almost audible clack.

 

Herrington did not seem to pay you any mind until the car had sped over an invisible boundary; there was a shift in the air, and Herrington's shoulders -- which had been riding closer and closer to their ears -- suddenly relaxed.

 

Your disposition, however, only seemed to become more thunderous. He had no doubt that when you'd recovered from your bout of motion sickness you'd be storming about the place like a restless ghost.

 

For now, you settled for leaning up and peering out the back of the car; Diarmuid did the same, but the sleek black car your guards had rented and followed you in seemed content to continue following along.

 

"I suppose they won't go until I'm back in the tower," you said. Out the corner of his eye, Diarmuid saw Herrington lift one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug.

 

"As per your mother's orders," they said, "But at least your mother __gave__  orders, I suppose."

 

You wrinkled your nose, but as the car coasted to a stop in front of the a dilapidated looking farm house, you set your shoulders back, raised your chin, and took several deep breaths.

 

He found he had to at least appreciate the determined set of your jaw; once again, however, he didn't have a chance to take care of your needs. Herrington had already slipped out of the car and around to the side before he had unbuckled his seat belt.

 

Diarmuid was just shutting his car door as you gave the other car a jaunty wave and turned to the building; Herrington had rested one hand at your elbow, their cloaked face leaning in to whisper something in your ear that Diarmuid didn't quite catch.

 

Instead of eavesdropping, he took a moment to evaluate the property. There were indeed wards -- and definitely set by another person, because even without being a Servant summoned in the Caster class, he could feel your mana so strongly inside of him, humming under every cell as though he were suddenly made of honeybees, that the difference between you and the weak, brittle wards that surrounded the property was like the difference between a cold draft and the windstorm summoned by a wildfire.

 

And as for the buildings . . . . there was the dilapidated farmhouse -- hadn't someone said something about a mansion or a manor? Or was that a memory from a different battle? -- and, almost just as run down, there was indeed a tall, narrow tower rising above it.

 

The beaten down path the car had stopped on lead more to the tower than to the house at this point, but as Diarmuid walked around the building from the other side -- gauging the departure of your assigned guards out the corner of his eye as he did so -- he saw another path trailing from the farmhouse to your tower. It was clearly not a path that had been planned, but something more akin to a deer path, where the grass had been worn down by the repeated application of someone else -- presumably Herrington, who was standing exactly where the path ended, almost as though it were a habit, while you stood just inside the doorway of the tower.

 

Standing at the corner of the farmhouse, watching your impassive face, Diarmuid felt his breath catch and his stomach tighten. There was something wrong with the way you were looking at the world, suddenly, as though whoever had been staring out the window of the plane had suddenly been replaced with someone else. There was a flatness to your eyes, as though you no longer cared about anything at all, and it gave them a flinty intensity.

 

All at once, from your face, and the way Herrington's hand had found it's place on your shoulder, he understood more about your situation than he had cared to; his mind made several intuitive leaps, tracing over patterns he'd observed in Fionn's court absentmindedly before braving the unknown.

 

Your parents might have engineered the Holy Grail War that was about to take place, but you'd been a weapon long before then, and you would be a weapon afterwards, too. You were raised, whether you knew it yet or not, as the final say in a war that could span the world, under the cover of the secrecy of the Magus Association's harsh rules and restrictions, and when all of that was over, if you were still alive, you'd be sacrificed in the name of family lineage and reputation, to make way for someone more manageable.

 

It was just a theory -- it wasn't in Diarmuid's story to be particularly perceptive; but he was a warrior, and a warrior knew someone -- or something -- bred for war when he saw them. Still, as he realized these things, he felt no fear. Something else lingered at the back of his neck and in the bottom of his stomach, something he didn't know or care to name.

 

He wasn't sure what he had to offer, but no one deserved to live like that, either; crossing the length of the house to you, he passed behind you and came up to your other side.

 

The left of a king was not the honorable place; he would have to trust Herrington not to be fully a part of whatever plot your family had arranged. He would never be able to take their place as your right hand, when they'd clearly been in that position for so much longer.

 

Instead, as you turned to him, he kneeled.

 

You seemed a little taken aback; he watched as your feet took a step back into the tower; behind you, he could see narrow, winding stairs. He wondered how many rooms there were in this tower, so out of place in the land around it -- was it just the one, at the very top, were there more? It didn't look wide enough to hold more than one small room per floor.

 

"You orders," he prompted, after a pause. There was silence, and the sound of footsteps; Herrington was retreating to the farmhouse.

 

"Orders . . . ?" even your voice seemed different; Diarmuid had committed to his actions, but now he found himself looking up, eyes tracing over your face as though it would tell him something, but you were just a trapped mage back in the cage you called home.

 

He knew better than to try to free you. After all, what had freeing Grainne helped?

__Grainne was happy, though,__ part of his mind whispered; and that part of his mind wasn't wrong. She'd been happy; Fionn wouldn't have hurt her, and she wasn't given to dangerous hobbies. She would have been fine. It was only Diarmuid who had died for his betrayal.

 

__As it should be__ , he told himself.

 

"I suppose the plan's the same. Herrington should have some maps of town in the manor," so it was you who had made the farmhouse to be more than it was; Diarmuid ducked his head, finding a sudden smile squirming at the corner of his lips. Thoughts of Grainne were chased away by some stinging, overwhelming emotion, as you continue, "Once you've grabbed the maps, you should be able to pinpoint some good places to check for summonings to have taken place. Anywhere where the flow of magic is strong."

 

"Herrington will be able to pinpoint those, I assume?" Diarmuid asked, "I have to admit, I've never been involved with those arts."

 

Your mouth curved, briefly, as though you had to struggle to hide something, "Herrington could, or I . . . ."

 

Before you could finish whatever you were going to say, you spun on your heel, taking the steps up the tower two at a time and calling over your shoulder, "Herrington will have everything you need. Dismissed."

 

Diarmuid sighed as he bowed his head for a moment longer. His body suddenly felt tense, as though he were ready to spring into action at the slightest noticed, but for what and why? What had he been expecting you to say? Had he been hoping for something?

 

All the centuries he'd been gone from this world seemed to pull him down as he stood, as though he'd aged in those few moments after you left, and he hesitated, staring at the door to your tower.

 

You'd left it open, but it wasn't like you'd left the conversation with a clear mind, either. It was a warm night, but there were other reasons to close doors behind you, too, and after mulling it over, he reached out to pull it shut.

 

"I wouldn't do that," Herrington's voice said behind him, "The wood gets tetchy when someone else handles it."

 

Diarmuid turned slowly; some part of him, in the back of his head, still considered Herrington a rival, though it was unfair, and some other part of him considered them an enemy. They had a tray in their hands.

 

You must have wanted some refreshments after the trip. Of course. Hastily, Diarmuid took several steps to the side, allowing Herrington access. They glided past him as though they were already used to his fumbling about.

 

"I'll be going out this evening," they said, "To see if I can hear anything interesting. We might as well refrain from making our move too soon, so if you'd like to spend today getting settled in, that might be best."

 

And then they were off; like you had, they took the stairs two at a time, disappearing around the curve of the tower in seconds.

 

You had summoned Diarmuid into a world centuries past his time, that he only recognized because of the magics wrought on his being.

 

So why did he feel so disappointed when he didn't fit in?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work kicked my ass. . . . .
> 
> The fight with Gilgamesh was difficult, and I had a hard time getting him to be properly Haughty and Arrogant at first. I think I distinguish too much between Caster Gil and Archer Gil's personality, since CasGil is basically just Archer Gil going "I'm gonna be a mage bc these jerks are all super arrogant!! F THEM!"
> 
> (But because he did that, Caster Gil now exists in all of The Holy Grail's records like, joke's on you, Gil. Joke's on you.)

Herrington brought you tea, noticed your moody disposition, and quickly excused themselves, not even giving you the chance to explain yourself or ask for a listening ear. Which was fine -- you wouldn't be able to explain yourself anyway, and they were the last -- or second to last -- person you wanted to know what you were feeling right now.

 

After all, they were just your tutor -- while sometimes it looked like the two of you might be close friends, the fact of the matter was that it was your parents writing their paychecks, and you couldn't trust anyone your parents did.

 

Being back in England, on the outskirts of London, where the Clock Tower had no right to interfere with anything but still managed to dip their fingers in whatever pies they so chose, was giving you a headache.

 

So was the thought of your new knight and Herrington taking care of everything -- because Herrington was nothing if not efficient, hardworking and determined at all times, all traits you valued in them and found yourself lacking in comparison -- while you just . . . did what you always did, you supposed.

 

Waited for someone to need you. Waited for someone to want you.

 

It wasn't like that was going to happen any time soon now, was it? Yet still you found yourself dwelling on the matter as you tried to preoccupy yourself with meaningless studies.

 

The books Herrington had brought you, full of magical theory and occasionally the maths or scientific basis needed to understand that theory, weren't going to read themselves, and with the Holy Grail War beginning, you doubted Herrington would have enough time to actually tutor you.

 

Not that they'd had enough time for you in years. It was a stupid, bitter thought but it swirled around your head until you finally gave up, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, and simply flopped down in bed for a nap.

 

It might not have been a long journey, but going to Ireland and then coming back had taken a lot out of you, after all. The summoning might not have been any great feat -- the Holy Grail did most of the heavy lifting -- but the travel had been.

 

Talking to people for the first time in over a decade had been exhausting.

 

As you lay there on your side, watching the dust motes dance through the air in their own private court, you found yourself thinking about that day when you were eight years old. It was shortly after your parents had moved back to London from abroad -- they'd largely been too busy dealing with Herrington, who'd been sick -- though you were too young to know with what.

 

It never occurred to you that it was strange for your math tutor to come with you. After all, Herrington was your only friend and the only person outside of your parents who you ever talked to. But you weren't allowed to see them during this time, and found yourself spending more and more time alone, left to your own devices between your parent's work and Herrington's illness.

 

So you'd walked out. At the time, you'd been reading pirate books, and you'd managed to convince yourself that you'd be going on some grand adventure, on a ship, to lands of fantasy like El Dorado or Neverland or Atlantis. You'd practiced speaking like a pirate most of the way to town, and then as you grew tired and less enthusiastic, you'd occupied yourself with thinking about what kind of adventures you'd have and how the captain of the ship would like you so much that he adopted you as his own.

 

By the time you'd reached London proper, you'd inherited this imaginary ship and the captain had died a tragic death in the maws of a sea monster, who'd also left you stranded on an island, desperately trying to piece together enough resources to fix your ship.

 

It hadn't occurred to you, the whole walk there, how easy it was to get lost in London.

It wasn't that London was particularly big, so much as it twisted in on itself in an intricate maze that was much too much for the likes of an eight year old who had never left the house before; within an hour you had no idea where you were and were terrified that you would never find your way home. In two, you found yourself whispering apologies to your mother and father, begging their forgiveness that you'd run off without telling them, that you'd replaced them with a merciless pirate captain.

 

Within three, the streets of London whispered back. Ghosts came to you with transparent flowers for your hair, with bread and cheese that tasted like dust but gave you the strength to keep walking. Phantoms stopped you as you walked, to cheer you up with macabre stories about the passionate romances and cunning intrigues that had sent them to an early grave. Soon, the streets were filled with nothing but ghosts, and you didn't feel frightened or alone anymore, just very, very sleepy.

 

If it hadn't been for the mage who found you, you would have died. Of course, it wasn't like you were difficult to find by that point -- no one had magic circuits like yours anymore, capable of calling the dead back from beyond the cradle of human experiences -- not restless ghosts seeking revenge or redemption, but peaceful spirits who had no need for the human world for decades or even centuries -- no one had the power to call back the echoes of their human lives and fill them with some semblance of the person they'd been in life, as though they'd simply taken a jaunt to Heaven, coming back with souvenirs and wild stories.

 

And no one did it on such a massive scale, with so little training and even less preparation. The mage who approached you -- who's name you would later learn was Joseph Tetch -- did so already shaken. You might have been a child, and the shades might have meant no harm. You might have been dying, your magic circuits overloading and burning down -- but that kind of power was not something you approached lightly.

 

He coaxed you into releasing the spirits, one by one at first, and then massive hoards of them as he promised you tea cakes and stuffed animals and all those things adults like to give to children when they know very little about them, and then, once you were half napping against his shoulder, he took you to the Clock Tower, where your father had been working on some very important research that he wasn't overly fond of.

 

Repurposing brilliance to the desires of small minds was a crime, he'd said on more than one occasion. You weren't conscious by the time you were passed into his arms, though, so you had no idea what he might have had to say to Joseph Tetch and the circumstances of your arrival.

 

When you woke the next day, it was in the tower. Herrington, skittish from the change in surroundings and still quite sick, was back to being your tutor, and it quickly became apparent that they would be your only contact with the outside world for quite some time. Your mother was preoccupied in trying to cover up your slight -- their slight, in keeping your unusual capabilities hidden -- and your father had received word from the Magus Association that you were not to interfere in Clock Tower matters again.

 

Herrington, for their part, did not treat you any differently -- they never had, even when you had rotted their lunch and turned their juice to something bitter and potent when you were six in a fit of pique because they weren't paying enough attention to you. It had turned out all right then -- both your parents had been thrilled and Herrington had simply gotten another lunch -- but from that point, you couldn't help but notice they never drank anything but water, and they subsisted largely on things that wasn't quite so vulnerable to the passage of time.

 

They had never blamed you, even if they'd have had the right, and that had meant the world to you in the years since your house arrest.

 

You fell asleep dreaming of tea cakes -- the kind of buttery balls that were coated in confectioner's sugar; but when you opened them, one after another the insides were all full of worms -- and you were almost relieved when you woke with a start, your head ringing with an invisible alarm.

 

Someone had broken through the wards. Reflexively, you reached out, feeling the weight of their presence, and pulled -- still hazy and half asleep, you didn't realize what they had to be until your grip on them simply slipped off.

 

Another Heroic Spirit -- so you might not have been the first to summon your Servant after all.

 

Still, they seemed to have the same idea you had -- you felt their magic, hot and dry like a desert in the height of summer -- as they marched towards you; and behind them, lingering and apologetic, something that smelled too strongly of roses.

 

Your head was pounding from trying to move them, and you suddenly wished Herrington had brought you lunch instead of tea, earlier. It wouldn't really have made a difference -- magic circuits didn't replenish that easily -- but it might have made you more comfortable as your body suddenly remembered -- or decided -- it was hungry.

 

Instead, all you could do was lean heavily on your window sill, glowering down at the grounds until two figures made their way out of the growing dusk; one of them was a tall man in exotic clothing -- clothing that came from a faraway time as well as a faraway place -- with hair that glinted golden even in the red of the setting sun. Behind him, more than a respectful distance apart, was a young woman with cropped dark hair and a bowed head.

 

You narrowed your eyes as the man stopped in front of your tower, crossing his arms over his chest and looking up at you with a pleased smirk.

 

"I thought we'd be starting with a challenge today," he said, and in the light of the dying sun his eyes were bloody and dark, "But it looks like you don't know what to do with all of that power, mongrel."

 

Unsure what to say to that in order to keep your dignity, you simply allowed your scowl to deepen. There was a moment of silence.

 

The dark haired woman caught up to her Servant, shivering and rubbing her arms as she looked around her, "Gilgamesh. . . my lord, shouldn't we at least strategize before we go picking fights?"

 

The blond man snorted, waving a hand at her dismissively, "No. This suits us fine. We're already in the middle of a fight right now, anyway."

 

You thought he might have a poor relationship with the woman, at first, but now he favored her with an almost intimate smirk; as he did so, you caught a flash of something -- a smell, like incense or candles, perhaps, or else the feeling of feathers bundled up in one's arms or picking up one's favorite cat.

 

The girl -- who now seemed much younger than you'd thought she was, too young to be involved with arcane circles painted in blood or battle royals -- flushed an angry scarlet; as she tilted her head, you saw that the right side of her face was covered in an ugly scar.

 

"My Lord Gilgamesh," she said, slowly and carefully, like speaking politely was taking every ounce of self control she'd ever had in her life, "I have certain concerns about this course of action."

 

He waved her off again, flippantly.

 

"I want to see what she's got," he said, "Since I manifested in this form anyway -- let's see how worthy it is of a class for me."

 

His Master sighed, reaching up to run a hand through her hair and then down across her face. She seemed to have been put through the ringer at this point, and you leaned forward, resting your elbows in your tower window.

 

"Should you reveal the name of your Servant so casually?" you asked her; she blinked up at you, frowning.

 

"There's no point in hiding it," she said, "Not from you."

 

That was a strange response; you filed it away, unsure what to make of it. Did you have a reputation, out in the grand scheme of mage society? You hadn't been aware of one -- certainly, you'd caused a stir as a child, but there hadn't been any similar incidents since then -- it was easy to assume you'd faded from public scrutiny, and been relegated to something of an urban legend, or eccentric hermit.

 

At least . . . that's what you thought happened to people in your position.

 

Gilgamesh gave her a rather grumpy look; his red eyes narrowed, and he seemed rather put out -- nor was he keen to keep his thoughts to his self.

 

"I hate that weak side of you, mongrel," he said; ripples of golden light shimmered behind him, as though he were laid in a crystal clear lake, and someone had dropped gold coins into it, for luck or prosperity or wishes to come true, "I'll show you what someone is capable of when they defy fate!"

 

The attack happen so quickly; even with time to prepare yourself, your eyes couldn't process what was happening -- you briefly saw the emergence of twenty or thirty staves -- but before you could really get a good look at them, they were crashing into your tower.

 

And then your tower was crashing into them back; it was the only way you could describe it; something within the tower shook, and then straightened itself and lashed out with the very force that had been flung against it.

 

You saw, for a moment, a brief look of shock pass over Gilgamesh's features; you saw his Master brace herself, and pull something out of her jacket -- and then they were both flung back, into the woods.

 

You felt mana flow into you from the tower, a strange, unpleasant sensation you weren't accustomed to, like taking a drink from a water bottle and tipping it too far, so that instead of going in your mouth, half of the water ended up splashing over your clothes.

 

Or like salt rubbed into a sore you hadn't realized was there. It stung, and everything in your body rebelled against it, but there was no where for it to go, either, so you let it tear at your insides.

 

At the edge of the clearing, not nearly as far as you'd expected, Gilgamesh and his Master both stood. Murderous energy was radiating off of the man, red eyes narrowed to slits, but it was difficult to get a read on his Master.

 

She seemed like she'd been prepared for the blast, in any case -- it looked like while this Servant was fooling around with things he didn't understand, she had some understanding of what to expect. You scooted closer to your window, leaning out it lazily, and stared down at her impassively.

 

That seemed to get Gilgamesh's hackles raised, but he didn't say anything. He just crossed his arms over his chest.

 

"So you reflected the force of my attack back at me, mongrel," he said, "A simple trick."

 

You shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly.

 

It was weird -- you'd expected to be intimidated by the enemy Servants, but though this man's power was immense -- far greater that Diarmuid's -- you weren't sure that it outclassed your own at all.

 

"Lord Gilgamesh, there's something you need to understand," his Master began, but Gilgamesh cut her off with a sharp hand motion. The ripples of his attack had already begun appearing, but you were in no mood for more of your tower's nonsense.

 

"Lords and ladies of the winds and sky, I bequeath you," you said, haughtily, airily, as though you were really were something other than human for a moment, "Savage the land as you will, ravage those who walk the land as you will -- rouse yourselves, be wild, be free."

 

It was not an incantation you'd found in a book or any such nonsense; and yet with every word, the strange Master grew paler, as though she knew without needing to see it that the words you spoke were law, in a way most mages would never be able to understand.

 

Gilgamesh must have felt a change in the air, because a look of understanding did cross his face, suddenly wild and gleeful, and, for a moment, pained, as though he'd seen a reflection of some childish hope or dream.

 

Before his magic staves could crash into your tower again, the sky seemed to break open; the world around you howled as a host of a hundred or a thousand spirits hurtled to the land; as though they couldn't see your tower, they tore past you, ripping into the trees around you, hurtling themselves towards Gilgamesh and his Master.

 

Gilgamesh didn't lose his cool, even as his Master fumbled at her jacket, as though she might find something, anything, to protect them, and he hauled her over his shoulder, summoning more staves to fight off the wild spirits and taking what cover he could behind the trees.

 

To the untrained eye, perhaps it looked as though a tornado had simply dropped from the sky; it upended the rental car still in the driveway,which Herrington had yet to return, and yanked at farmhouse as though it might find something it could remove there -- but you reached out, flinging one hand out, but reaching with your mind, and slammed the roof back in place with such force that the whole building shook, and the spirits around it scattered. Trees were ripped out of the ground, and tossed about like confetti; through the haze of dust and debris, you saw Gilgamesh holding his Master to his chest, sheltering her with his body, and you didn't doubt that if he hadn't done such -- and hadn't pinned himself into place with another of his own weapons -- one or both of them might have gone flying the way the trees had.

 

One of the creatuers rose up to your window, ducking in just long enough to press a sweet, stinging kiss to your cheek before it zoomed back out.

 

The attack did not last long -- without your magic circuits, of course, they couldn't even exist, and even you didn't have enough mana to risk keeping them in place for more than intimidation when there was so little you knew about the battle at hand.

 

As the last of the spirits drifted back towards the heavens, Gilgamesh yanked the chain he'd summoned from the ground; it dissipated in golden dust. His Master pulled away from him quickly, but he wasn't paying her any attention now that he was sure she wouldn't die.

 

Instead, he strode towards you, arms no longer crossed but hanging at his side, fingers flexing.

 

"You'd have had no chance if I'd been summoned in my proper class, but luckily for you, __mongrel__ , I'm still adjusting to this class's parameters."

 

Once he was at a more comfortable proximity, he craned his neck, looking up at you with the satisfied smirk of a cat who'd snuck out of doors without permission.

 

Before he could continue he had to dodge a spear swiping past his head; the movement was too quick for you to follow -- one moment, he looked like he was about to say something -- the next he was leaning back like he'd been invited to a game of limbo, then spinning around, arms crossing, as gold rippled around him.

 

Diarmuid was standing between you and the other Servant, radiating the intensity of a man who sees death so often he no longer considers it an enemy, or even a distant friend, but rather an estranged lover.

 

"Di-"

 

"Do not say my name," he said, as though he'd known what you were about to do, even though his name had barely made a sound over your lips, "Unlike this fool, I see no reason to discard whatever resources we have in our possession."

 

The words did not upset Gilgamesh in the least; no -- he was eyeing your Servant with a look of hunger; his tongue lapped at his lower lip.

 

"A fine specimen," he commented -- to you, as though Diarmuid hadn't said a word. This behavior didn't seem worth protesting; Diarmuid simply settled into his stance. Gilgamesh considered him a little longer, golden ripples shimmering around his body, before waving a hand.

 

Diarmuid tensed, but no attack was forthcoming -- rather, it seemed Gilgamesh had discarded the weapons, allowing them to fade back into whatever ethereal world they'd come from.

 

"Very well -- I won't take your words personally, mongrel," he told Diarmuid, "And I'll even grace you with the information I was about to give your Master."

 

He gave your knight one last once over, before turning his attention to you, "The Holy Grail War has started sooner than you may have anticipated. It seems besides myself and your Lancer, at least one other Servant has already been summoned."

 

Your eyes flicked over to his Master -- who seemed to be more interested in Diarmuid than anything Gilgamesh was saying. That irritated you so much that you redoubled your focus on Gilgamesh partially out of defiance.

 

Two could play at that game! You'd just oggle __her__  Servant!

 

". . . .Mongrel, pay attention," Gilgamesh snapped, "My Master has already heard this. She's allowed to slack off."

 

"I wasn't slacking!" you snapped back; your voice was more childish than you'd hoped to come across and you took a deep breath, "You __are__ both enemies. It's natural for me to remain wary of you, even if today's battle has been decided."

 

"My liege," Diarmuid cautioned, "It is unwise to provoke further hostilities."

 

He sounded much more formal than he had earlier that morning, and being reprimanded by him in general stung.

 

"I'm gracious as ever," Gilgamesh commented wryly, "I understand your Master's position. I would feel caged and lonely up in that tower as well."

 

Diarmuid did not say anything to defend you. You supposed there was nothing to be defended from, but Gilgamesh's words struck too close to home, and you hated it.

 

If Herrington were there, they wouldn't defend you either, but for a wild moment you imagined what they'd say if they did.

 

"Do you have any more information for us?" Diarmuid asked.

 

Gilgamesh looked at him, lips curling into a smile, "I suppose. I might as well tell you -- the other Servant that has been summoned is Archer. I know little beyond that, as of yet, but I'd do something about that window."

 

And with that, he turned, striding confidently into the tattered woods. With a final glance back at Diarmuid, his Master followed.

 

Diarmuid sighed, reaching up to run one hand through his messy hair, and then he looked up at you. Your heart nearly stopped at his expression -- pained and noble and maybe also a little mad.

 

"I'm sorry about the farmhouse," you said, immediately, before it occurred to you that that might not be why he was angry. Unsure, your eyes slid away from his face, to the doorway to your room, and you called down, "If you'd like to talk, I can let you upstairs."

 

Diarmuid was silent for a while; when you risked a glance down, he was looking out at the sad, broken woods. Then he nodded to himself, and turned to you properly, "I'll come up to speak with you."

 

It was a relief; surely, whatever had upset him couldn't be too unforgivable if he was willing to talk. You closed your eyes, reaching down into the base of the tower; the wards built into the stones slackened, and you felt the wooden door at the base of the tower open.

 

Diarmuid did not hesitate; you felt it as he entered the tower, and suddenly his emotions slammed into you -- fear, anger, the stinging tide of disappointment.

 

He'd thought you were different -- but you couldn't feel anything more concise than that in the flurry of fear -- that you'd be dead by the time he got to you, that you'd be injured, that he'd failed, failed failed.

 

The sickening sensation of betrayal tangled around your knees, like stepping wrong in a bog after chasing will-o-wisps, like being dragged down into an early grave --

 

Your eyes snapped open as the thought threatened to suffocate you, and you forced yourself away from the sensation of Diarmuid's mind, pushing yourself almost as far as the sky. He was almost to the top of the stairs, and you allowed yourself to slip back in from the window, setting down onto your bed with something almost resembling grace.

 

Diarmuid appeared in your room at almost that moment exactly; his eyes traced over the sparse furniture -- a wooden desk that took up most of the room, stacked high with the books Herrington brought for your lessons -- an intricately carved wooden chest, open and filled with blankets, a wardrobe, Herrington's chair.

 

Between all of that, there was barely room for you -- Diarmuid's presence seemed to fill up the space so completely that you were left dizzy, almost desperate for air, but unwilling to pull away from the hazy smell of pine and smoke and damp earth.

 

Diarmuid's face was so much more guarded than his heart had been, but you still hastened to reassure him, "Diarmuid -- I'm fine. We'll be okay -- I'm much stronger than they are--"

 

But Diarmuid seemed to have realized that, because he was much more preoccupied with your room, looking around once, and then turning completely to try looking again, as though he'd magic it into better condition, and he finally turned to you.

 

"You live here?" he asked, astonished.

 

You blinked up at him.

 

With him in here, it seemed silly to insist it wasn't so bad -- he obviously though it was -- so you said the only thing you could think of, motioning to the window behind you.

 

"You can see London from here," you said, as though that one redeeming quality were enough. For you, it always had been, but his eyes flicked to the window almost disinterestedly, before he glanced at you again, and forced himself to smile.

 

"I see," he said, and it seemed like his next words took all his willpower to utter, "It must be a wonderful view."

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This confrontation was supposed to be later, but Dia threw a fit.
> 
> (Also, I actually finished two chapters this weekend, so there's one in backlog! Whoo!)

He'd meant to talk to you about the love spot, but he couldn't do it.

 

The way you smiled at him, like you could be satisfied with a small, bare room and the view from London and nothing more, offering him a sunset and empty skies -- he couldn't do anything but promise you it was enough, as though his words had the power to make anything better.

 

At least he could not make anything worse; he could let you live with the illusion of a simple crush, with the belief in love at first sight and fairy tale romances.

 

He barely fit in this room; he could cross it in two steps, and he did, sinking down beside you on the mattress, and feeling the way the air around you seemed to heat, though you didn't say anything, just looked down into your hands, folded neatly in your lap.

 

If he hadn't been trained on the battlefield, he probably would have tripped over the chair you'd neglected to push in, and he found himself wondering if you ever __did__ trip over it, or if you'd gotten so used to living in this small space that it didn't make any difference anymore.

 

"How long have you been up here?" he asked; it was enough to draw you out of your nervous shell, and you looked up at him, wide-eyed, like you couldn't believe he was asking about you.

 

He forced himself to smile again; the way you smiled back made it worth it, no matter that his cheek muscles were so against the idea that it hurt, and he had to look away after a few moments to give them a rest.

 

His eyes roved over the open chest on the other side of the room, taking in the brightly colored fabric of a quilt, exposed to the world, and beginning to look dusty.

 

Did you keep that chest open in order to brighten the place up? Or was he putting too much of himself into your shoes? He took a deep breath, trying to remind himself that you were your own person, not a reflection of himself -- and he felt you reach out, placing on hand gently against his shoulder.

 

"Diarmuid?" you asked; the sound of his name on your lips, as though you were equals, just sent him spinning further out of his comfort zone, but he bore with it.

 

He did not want to disappoint you. He didn't want the world to disappoint you, and he braved another smile, "You don’t go anywhere else?"

 

You seemed to realize he was asking you questions then; understanding dawned on your face, and your breath hitched, as though you'd been caught off guard all over.

 

"Oh, no," you said, "I'm not allowed. House arrest."

 

That was right -- you'd said something about that, and he remembered how your "guards" from earlier had lingered, watching you until you were at your tower door.

 

"I'd assumed," he started -- but then couldn't bring himself to finish it. Of course he'd assumed you'd lived in the house, but hadn't you said from the beginning? You had your own tower.

 

But in Ireland, it had sounded like prestige, like luxury -- the reality was so different.

 

You only ever saw Herrington.

 

Your hand was still resting on his shoulder, but he didn’t move to shake you off or brush you aside -- he let you touch him, and wondered if it was pity?

 

It was natural to feel a desire to comfort someone who you knew was suffering -- but were you suffering? He couldn't imagine living this way -- trapped in such a small space when he was so used to roaming the countryside, to hunting in the woods, to living in the land. But this was all you'd ever known -- perhaps you were content.

 

__And perhaps he'd really loved Grainne__ , a bitter part of him whispered, but he couldn't shake it back this time. No -- more than a sense of suffocating loneliness, you were ashamed. Did you think you deserved this?

 

"Why?" he asked, "What could you have done for . . . ."

 

He did not know how to gesture to the tower walls without fear of knocking something over, and settled for jerking his chin at the window, like he could defy London itself.

 

You considered this; he wondered if he should have even asked -- your eyes darted to the side, and he wondered if he were digging his fingers into and old wound.

 

For a wild moment, he thought he might reach out and take hold of your hand, almost unbidden -- but his hands remained where they were, refusing to move without his direct order.

 

Was it pity? Your fingers curled against his bicep now -- your hand had slipped while you were lost in reverie, as though you no longer had the strength to keep it there.

 

"I raised an army of ghosts when I was eight years old," you said finally.

 

Diarmuid blinked.

 

Whatever sense of pity he had fled, abruptly, when faced with the absurdity of what he was hearing. An army?

 

"Not a real army," you hurried, "It wasn't like. . . I wasn't taking over London or anything. I'd gotten lost, and . . . I was just lonely and scared, so I made up people, only the people I made up turned out to be . . . I guess the city just recognized them somehow, and brought them back. I don't think they caused too much trouble, but by the time the authorities found me, I guess my mana was running really low."

 

"So they hid you away?" Diarmuid wasn't sure he followed the logic of that. It seemed the opposite of a solution -- like they were begging a more extreme show of power, or temper.

 

"There are wards built into this tower," you said, "To keep my magic contained. If I exert myself too much it just gets recycled back. Magic gets pushed away from the tower too. . . Herrington says it's left over from a long time ago, when mages were more powerful."

 

"I see . . . " Diarmuid knew little of magic, but he thought he could understand that much at least, and he bowed his head, "Forgive me. I don't know if I could live in similar. . ."

 

"You could," there was something to the way you said it that made him look up again; you were staring at him intensely, with eyes that seemed to burn with a fever, and he wanted to lean in and pull you close, to smother your voice against his chest, so your words fell harmlessly to the bedspread instead of . . . whatever it was they were doing to his head, or his heart, "It's not so hard. You wouldn't know anything else. You could do it."

 

You turned from him then, leaning back, looking out your window at London, and he could hear a smile in your voice, faint and tender, "Sometimes I sneak out, anyway."

 

"And they don’t catch you?" he asked; there was something shaky to his voice, as though he fully expected the ground beneath him to be pulled away, and when you turned back to him, your smile told him he was right.

 

"No one can catch me," you say; one corner of your mouth quirked up, impish and sweet, and then you bit your lower lip, as though you were considering telling him.

 

He wanted you to tell him. He wasn't sure if he wanted to hear it, but he wanted you to tell him. He did not know how to ask.

 

But maybe you sensed it somehow, because your mouth changed -- your smile broadened, so that it finally reached your eyes, "I leave this body behind, and I go sneaking around as a ghost. No one can see me, but I can see London!"

 

Unbidden, affection uncurled in Diarmuid's chest, like a wayward cat moving towards a patch of sunlight, and he felt himself smile in return -- an easy, natural smile, "Do you do it often?"

 

"Every day," you said, and then suddenly covered your mouth, looking away. He wasn't sure what was wrong, but after you took a deep breath, you looked over to him, and spoke, mouth still covered, "I mean, I still study and everything. . . . I don't slack off."

 

Diarmuid's eyes trailed to the window, falling not on the silhouette of London in the distance, but rather the upended trees and torn branches. He was not so sure that you needed to study.

 

"What about you?" you asked; he started -- it took a moment for his mind to trace over the conversation, looking for something he might have missed, but he couldn't find anything.

 

"Me?" he asked.

 

You nodded, shyly folding your hands in your lap and staring at them.

 

"I haven't been to London at all," he said, wondering if that's what you were asking. From the way you blinked up at him, he wasn't sure if he'd answered the right question at all.

 

"No, I don't think . . . ." you frowned in confusion, "I don't think London existed during your life. I meant, um, do you ever do anything you're not supposed to?"

 

Half of Diarmuid's life came unbidden to his mind, and he looked away. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk to you about Grainne, but . . .you'd been honest with him.

 

Seeming to sense his hesitation, you sighed. It wasn't an angry or disappointed sigh, but it gave away more than he thought you'd have liked to, "It's alright. You don't have to tell me."

 

Was it hurt? Or was it fear?

 

Should he reach out to you, or was it his fault? Would that be overstepping his place?

 

"That other Servant . . . he said Archer has already been summoned as well," refocusing on the war at hand was coldly reassuring -- it gave him a framework to deal with, but also felt like having something taken away suddenly. Still, you seemed content to follow his lead.

 

Your next words were not what he expected, "It's worrisome. I know Herrington likes to pretend at being a spy . . . if you can, look out for them, please? Since they're older than me, they don't really listen to what I have to say."

 

The ground had indeed been pulled out from under Diarmuid's feet -- just not at the time he'd expected. Of course, it wasn't strange for a knight to look out for his fellows -- each and every one of Diarmuid's fellow knights had offered to help hide him from Fionn when Grainne had first demanded he steal her away; they'd even advised him to take her geas against him seriously, believing they could protect him from Fionn even if they could not protect him from fate.

 

Fionn's face resurfaced in his mind, though -- forcing himself to accept Diarmuid's relationship with Grainne when he secretly resented it.

 

That was the burden of a leader -- to make the right choice for the group, no matter what demands the heart wanted to make. He bowed his head to you.

 

"Of course," he said, "I'll protect them with my life, if need be."

 

Your expression was unreadable when he looked up, and you glanced out the window again, "Try to focus on both of you surviving. I . . . I'm responsible for us being in this war."

 

He wasn't sure how to bring up that he only existed because of the Holy Grail, and subsequently because of the war you'd started, so he simply stood, taking those two steps across the room, and glancing back.

 

Even with everything you'd said in it's defense, it seemed so small, as though it were something you'd outgrown, but had yet to leave behind.

 

Perhaps with the Holy Grail you could find freedom, or a community to belong to. It was something to hope for -- and maybe to fight for, since he had no need for the Holy Grail himself.

 

The stairs were dim and he had to walk slowly so as not to misstep. As soon as he'd stepped out of the tower, however, the door closed behind him -- you must have been paying close attention to his exit, and when he turned, looking up at the window, you were indeed looking down at him.

 

He raised on hand, in acknowledgment or farewell, and started across to the farmhouse. He'd been exercising when your showdown with the other Servant had occurred, and by Herrington's lack of response, he could only assume they weren't in the farmhouse.

 

After all, the sudden wind had . . . .

 

As he stepped into the farmhouse, he felt a nervous laugh build up first in his chest, and then in his throat, until it finally spilled out of him. He turned, leaning against the wall and slumping down, and reached up to cover his face with one hand.

 

What was he even doing here? How had he been summoned, when even with the Holy Grail's magic, he was so clearly out classed by you?

 

Shouldn't you have been capable of summoning a god or a demon?

 

A ribbon flickered in his mind's eye, and he looked up. That's right -- you'd summoned him with an item. A personal item, linked to him -- had you purposefully chosen him? Why? Did you think you'd be spared the power of his love spot by virtue of being his Master?

 

Pushing himself off of the wall, he walked further into the house, taking in the polished wood and the well-worn furniture. Unlike your tower, the house was well cared for, but at that time, it felt like a ghost town.

 

As he passed by the doorway into the dining room, his eyes fell on a note someone had placed on the table. He didn't hesitate to cross the room, scanning it but not picking it up.

 

It was a note from Herrington, addressed to him. As he committed the phone number they'd given for their personal cell to memory, something clicked in the back of his head.

You hadn't been the one who decided to summon him -- your parents had.

 

Now he did reach out, picking up the note and turning around -- there was a land line in the living room, and he crossed over to it, picking up the phone and dialing quickly.

 

He wasn't going hunting for Archer just yet, and neither was Herrington.

 

***

 

Your parents apparently maintained their own personal property independent of the farmhouse, and when Herrington told him, and gave him instructions on where to meet them so they could show him, he felt his blood beginning to boil. It was just another way for them to avoid the child they'd locked up in a tower for so long, like you were a dirty secret even though you'd hardly done anything to deserve being treated like a threat.

 

The thought he'd had earlier, the sudden realization that you might be a personal weapon, came back in full force as he righted the car and snapped open the door. With the mood he was in, he was lucky he didn't snap it clean off, but he paid no regard for that as he slipped in, and hunted around for the key.

 

He kept the tinted windows up as he drove; there was no reason to expose more people than necessary to his foul temper.

 

The meeting point Herrington had selected turned out to be a cafe, closed for the night and looking fairly unkempt, as far as cafes went. They were standing outside, waiting for him with their hands in their pockets and their hood pulled down, so that it seemed like even more of their face was obscured than usual. They strode towards him as he opened the door.

 

"So you made it," they said; something about their demeanor was different than it had been at the farmhouse, as though it was only now that they were away from home that they really slipped into their normal self. They tilted their chin, so that the light caught on the lower side of their face, allowing Diarmuid to see their smirk.

 

"Do you want to drive or give instructions?" he asked, not bothering to get out. Herrington seemed to consider it, before they crossed around behind the vehicle, languidly, and pulled open the door on his other side.

 

He shut his door, and they slid in, shutting their door before they got buckled up.

 

"With any luck, we'll get there during dinner. The missus does know how to cook," Herrington said.

 

It was a strange choice of words, but Diarmuid wasn't sure what bothered him about it, and he didn't give it any thought, just pulling out into the street in silence.

 

Herrington fell silent as well, though the air seemed a little strange, as though they wanted something but weren't sure how to approach it. It was an air that Diarmuid was used to, however, and he wasn't in the mood to be gentle about it.

 

"I've entered the service of your charge," he said harshly, "I have no time for affairs."

 

"No, I'm sure you don't," Herrington said, and rolled their window down; the air was cold and brisk as they drove, and out the corner of his eye, Diarmuid saw them lean into it, as though they were desperately trying to catch their breath.

 

He stayed focused on the road, but he couldn't blame them. He also felt like he was drowning -- but he always did. What had started as a blessing had become a curse, weighing him down as the desires of everyone around him rose higher and higher.

"You can't save anyone, you know," Herrington said at last, "Not anymore."

 

"I've never been able to," Diarmuid said shortly. Sacrifice himself for them, certainly, but sacrifice was never the same thing.

 

Herrington fell silent, only speaking to point Diarmuid in the right direction, until they finally pulled up in front of a much more stately house -- still not quite a mansion, but clearly a well to do townhouse.

 

The lights were on inside, and Diarmuid took some satisfaction in marring the view of the driveway with this battered rental car. As they got out, though, the light of the windows seemed to reveal enough of the car for Herrington to realize something was wrong.

 

"What happened here?" they asked. Diarmuid shrugged.

 

"Storm," he said. If Herrington guessed as to his meaning, it didn’t show in their movement or the lower part of their face, and they didn't say what conclusions they might have reached, settling instead for following Diarmuid to the house.

 

It was not, strictly speaking, covered by a knight's code of honor what to do in this situation. Diarmuid hesitated before he could knock on the door, and Herrington slipped in in front of him.

 

"You'll need to brace yourself," they said, and rapped three times, then paused, before knocking twice more.

 

It seemed to be some sort of code; the man who answered had clearly already made up his mind about the situation when he opened the door, and even as his eyes roved over Diarmuid's face, a scowl pulled at his face.

 

"Herrington," he said, "I suppose you're looking for supper. Go ahead inside -- keep my wife entertained while I deal with this . . . ghost."

 

Herrington was happy to duck under the man's arm and into his house, leaving Diarmuid on the stoop, burning with anger he didn't fully understand.

 

"You look like you have questions," your father said, and crossed his arms over his chest, standing with his feet apart, like if Diarmuid was determined to do him harm, he could resist.

 

Diarmuid almost considered doing him harm.

 

"Herrington eats at your table, but not your own child?" he asked, even though that wasn't the thing he came here for. The man raised an eyebrow.

 

"Don't try to lecture me," he said, "I'm sure the parents of your time were not better."

 

"They weren't jailors," Diarmuid replied, "And they didn't set their children up to be taken advantage of by strangers."

 

Shock passed over the man's face, then something gleeful and sick, and he threw his head back and laughed, a short, barking sound.

 

"You're quick, for a Lancer!" the man said, "No, most parents probably don't have to go to the extremes we do to keep their children under control."

 

Diarmuid felt his eyes narrow, and the man across from him narrowed his eyes in turn.

 

"So I'm supposed to do your parenting for you," Diarmuid said, "I see. Keep your kid in line so you don't have to. And I suppose you want me to win the Holy Grail War while I'm at it too, so you can save your face with your colleagues?"

 

The man shrugged one shoulder, looking passed Diarmuid at some distant point, as though Diarmuid wasn't worth looking at.

 

"That's irrelevant," he replied, "I know there are some mages hoping to find the Source of all magic with this, but our goal has nothing to do with the grail. No."

 

Now he did refocus on Diarmuid, eyes flat and dismissive, "My wife and I don't play at chance or competitions. We're making allies. Whoever wins the Holy Grail will gain glory and rank, and they'll only have us to thank for realizing their heart's desire -- the ones who set the whole process up in the first place. And [Name] -- after this, seeing you again would be worth anything, wouldn't it?"

 

Something inside Diarmuid snapped; he lunged, heaving the man up by his collar and pulling him in so Diarmuid could snarl right in his face, "So I'm bait, is that it old man? My curse is just a tool for you to utilize to control something you weren't meant to meddle with."

 

"Diarmuid?"

 

There was something wrong with the way Herrington's voice suddenly sounded; soft and brittle, but neither Diarmuid nor the man he was holding in the air like it was nothing turned to look. The man's face had gone carefully blank, as though he were prepared for anything, as though he were trying to calculate how to control Diarmuid, the way he'd so carefully calculated how to control you.

 

Diarmuid's arm was shaking; he wondered if you'd followed him and Herrington, if your ghostly form was there, hearing all of this -- he wondered what you'd want him to do if you had, what you'd be hoping for, looking on and unable to do anything.

 

No, you could always tell him what you needed from him -- the Holy Grail had provided that, at least. But Diarmuid didn't know what he wanted from himself. Did he want to defend you to the death, or did he want to leave this pathetic man with his pathetic wife in his pathetic house for the sake of some distant future, where they realized they were wrong and that they loved you?

 

That distant future didn't exist; and as soon as Diarmuid realized it, he found himself tossing the man into the house like a sack of potatoes. There was a crash, and a shout, but Diarmuid was already turning away, hands clenching into fists as he climbed down the steps to the driveway.

 

He'd have to wait for Herrington, of course -- you'd asked him to look after them, and he doubted they had a ride of their own when he'd driven them here. Doubted your parents would be willing to give them a ride when they'd gone so far out of their way to avoid and control you.

 

He was bait. The thought chilled him in a way that dying hadn't, and he almost didn't realize Herrignton had followed him already until they spoke.

 

"Diarmuid? What happened?"

 

Diarmuid snapped the car door open, "An argument. Ready to go?"

 

Herrington crossed the driveway and slipped in beside him, "I didn't realize you were planning on picking a fight."

 

"Wasn't," Diarmuid replied; it was a sullen answer.

 

Herrington must have realized he was going out of his way to avoid answering their questions, but refused to be deterred, and simply tried again, "Is he more irritating than I realized? I never thought I was particularly patient but . . . ."

 

Diarmuid took a deep breath, but when he let it out he found he was just as furious as he had been before, and had to try again.

 

"I don't like the way he thinks," he said; glancing at Herrington out the corner of his eye, he saw tupperwares on their lap, and it occurred to him they hadn't had nearly enough time to eat as he'd initially thought they'd be taking.

 

They seemed to follow his gaze, head turning down so their face was to their lap, and then turning back so they could face him.

 

"Dinner," they said, "I hate cooking."

 

There were three tupperwares -- either Herrington ate a lot or . . . .

 

"You brought some for [Name]?" Diarmuid asked.

 

Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise, but his body reacted to that possibility -- his shoulders relaxed, and the tension seemed to drain out of his chest.

 

"No, I just decided I was going to be the only one who ate tonight," even Diarmuid could pick up on the amount of sarcasm dripping from Herrington's voice, "While we're at it, I figured you could go on a diet. I'm eating __all__  of this myself."

 

Diarmuid finally started the car; at the feel of the engine starting, Herrington hurried to buckle themselves in, and Diarmuid followed suit.

 

"I don't know what's going on with this family," Herrington admitted as Diarmuid pulled out of the driveway, "And . . . I have some history with [Name] that isn't always pleasant, but we're all trying to grow as people, right? I might as well try to smooth things over."

 

Diarmuid almost laughed at that; so he'd thrown your father across the entryway, but Herrington still believed some sort of happy ending was possible. What would even happen if your parents realized they loved you? Would you really be able to accept them?

 

At first, probably, but afterwards?

 

Had Diarmuid really been able to accept Fionn, all those years that he lived with Grainne? Or was there too much history for them to overcome together?

 

Herrington was content with the quiet for a time, while Diarmuid mulled things over. He'd been too harsh with them earlier, but wasn't sure how to make amends, especially since he was suspecting more and more that his curse had impacted Herrington just as surely as it had influenced you.

 

Eventually, though, he decided he should at least brief them on the news from that afternoon -- and he was rewarded with a strange, strained sound from Herrington's throat.

 

"That's the power of a sorcerer," they said, after a pause, and reached up, as though they were going to play with their hair or run their fingers through it, before they remembered they were wearing a hood.

 

"A sorcerer?" Diarmuid shouldn't have been surprised; he supposed magic like that wasn't necessarily rare in his day, but he'd felt the difference in the air when he was around you and when he was around other mages, like Herrington.

"The [Surname] family were called back to London for conducting unauthorized experiments," Herrington replied, "[Name] was one of them. An attempt at bringing the world back to the days when magic was fresh and new. I think they thought they'd be praised for what they accomplished, but they've been kept under strict supervision since they returned. Even I have a hard time moving around without trouble since they brought me back with them."

 

They were leaving town now; when Diarmuid looked over to Herrington, for a moment, their window was half filled with London and half filled with wilderness, as if they were caught between two worlds.

 

"They brought you back?" Diarmuid asked.

 

Herrington shrugged, then gave him one of their cold smirks, "I was an orphan with no where to go. They might as well have."

 

That brought up more questions than it did answers -- but Diarmuid's mind was already so full of questions that all he could do was file them away in a box marked "for later" and keep driving.

 

He wondered if Herrington knew what Mr. [Surname] had told him. About the Holy Grail War being more about gaining powerful allies than about winning, about Diarmuid being a way to control a powerful sorcerer.

 

Herrington reached out, turning on the radio as they drove, and Diarmuid felt himself sigh before settling down. He wasn't sure if it was an intentional attempt to soothe him, or if he was being paranoid, but he appreciated it either way.

 

The rest of the drive passed quickly, and the demolished woods came into view; Herrington rolled their window down further so they could lean out of the care and gape at the destruction Diarmuid's headlights revealed.

 

They were still gaping as Diarmuid pulled into the driveway and got out of the car, walking around to pull Herrington's door open for them, and they remained speechless as they followed him into the house.

 

"I don't know what to do about the rental," they said, as they glanced back at it. In the shadows, it didn't look so bad, but Diarmuid knew as soon as the sun came back up, the care would look ten times worse than it had in your parent's driveway.

 

Herrington did not turn on the porch light as they went inside, and Diarmuid didn't either.

 

"Should we eat in the tower?" he called out, shutting the door; Herrington had already disappeared into the kitchen, and didn't seem to have heard him.

 

He turned the corner to find them microwaving the food they'd brought; they hadn't turned the kitchen light on, so he took the liberty of flipping it on, if only to dispell the eerie glow of the microwave.

 

The kitchen was a hundred times homier with the light on, but Herrington didn't seem to notice. He wondered if you would -- imagined coming down the stairs in the morning to find you poking around the kitchen.

 

What tea was it that you'd drank the other morning?

 

"Herrington," he said, "Do you think we could eat in the tower?"

 

"I'd prefer not to, but you can," Herrington replied, "It gets kind of cramped."

It would be good to at least make sure you ate, but somehow Diarmuid didn't feel satisfied by that answer.

 

Though he was willing to accept things for the way they were, Herrington seemed to sense his disappointment, because as the microwave went off and they went to get the food out of it, they offered, "I guess a little bit wouldn't be so bad."

 

Diarmuid sent them a grateful smile, and they hurried to transfer the food from the tupperware to the plates. They made a noble attempt at carrying two of the three plates, but their hands seemed shaky, so Diarmuid took them both, allowing Herrington to go back for the third.

 

As they went out to the tower, Diarmuid looked up, startled to find you asleep in the window. Had you watched him leave, earlier? Were you waiting for them to get back?

 

Herrington stuck their thumb in their mouth, biting down, and then pressed their thumb against the door. For a moment, Diarmuid had a horrible feeling, as though he'd seen a monster in the mason work, and then the door creaked open, allowing the two of them entry.

 

Diarmuid followed behind Herrington, up the rickety stairs. This time he noticed that the tower did at least seem to have a couple of other doors -- so perhaps you weren't as confined as he'd thought at first.

 

Though he couldn't imagine going downstairs to another tiny room was all that exciting, either.

 

Herrington nudged the next door open with their hip, wiping their thumb on the leg of their pants before they entered your room completely. As Diarmuid peered in over their shoulder, he was relieved to find that you'd at least pulled a blanket over your shoulders. He slipped into the room properly as Herrington took the couple of steps necessary to sit down beside you, reaching out and shaking you awake.

 

You made a small noise, like a cat being prodded at, and turned to Herrington.

 

"Dinner time," they said, in a voice that was more tender than usual. You made another mumbled noise, and sat up properly, rubbing at your face as Herrington settled a tray on your lap.

 

They hadn't been wrong about the space; once Diarmuid settled in the chair, he could only imagine they'd have to be careful about how they got up when it was time to leave.

 

"Did you find Archer?" you asked them, voice sleepy. Herrington shook their head.

 

"Not quite yet," they said, "We had some other leads to investigate. We'll go looking tomorrow, though."

 

You nodded your assent to this, and started to eat. That seemed to be the signal for Diarmuid to pass Herrington their plate, and then to dig in himself.

 

It was a quiet, sleepy dinner, but he thought maybe you enjoyed yourself, curled up between Herrington and the window, or at least he hoped you did. Herrington took the time to tuck you in afterwards, while Diarmuid waited by the door, and then they followed him down the stairs.

 

The door to the tower swung shut behind them, though Diarmuid was sure you weren't awake to close it yourself.

 

"Don't get too attached," Herrington said, as they took the lead; Diarmuid took a moment to continue staring at the tower door before he followed them. Herrington didn't have anything more to say, and Diarmuid didn't know how to ask what they'd meant.

 

But it was a bit late to not get attached to either you or Herrington. You might have told Diarmuid to be careful with his life during this Holy Grail War, but when it came down to it, he wouldn't hesitate to give his life to save either of you.

 

Whatever curse this family was trying to pass down to you, he'd see it ended here.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop broke a few days ago and I wasn't able to write. . . . It's fixed now, but I'm posting this chapter without having written anything more. . . . orz
> 
> (maybe if I acknowledge my own human frailties in this regard, God will be kind and NOT BREAK MY STUFF ANYMORE)
> 
> Also I mentioned Deptford specifically but I don't actually know if they have cobblestones. I checked out a bunch of tourist books from the library but this isn't the kind of thing they mention???? So if I got it wrong throw me some Facts in the comments please and thanks

The cozy feeling from dinner hadn't dissipated by the time you woke up, though Herrington and Diarmuid were long gone, and you found yourself cheerfully going about your morning despite the evening's events.

 

Gilgamesh and his Master hadn't been that bad anyway; they were your enemies, but it wasn't like you had anything to be afraid of, and if you were judging the difference between Gilgamesh and Diarmuid . . . you doubted there would be many more Servants like Gilgamesh.

 

Though if you thought about the matter, Gilgamesh seemed to be operating under a sort of handicap -- he'd had weapons like those chains he'd used to ground himself from your attack, but he hadn't utilized any of them when he was attacking you, though surely they'd be more effective than the butt of a stave.

 

He'd also said something about being summoned in the wrong class.

 

But all of that paled when you thought about they way Diarmuid and Herrington had squished themselves into your room the night before, and the way your stomach seemed to be filled with butterflies whenever you found your eyes landing on Diarmuid.

 

Your bathroom was downstairs from your room, and maybe it was the change of scenery that brought something to mind that you'd missed the night before. You'd been really tired, and hadn't quite noticed it at the time, but something seemed to be bothering him.

 

Herrington had said they hadn't found Archer, though, so maybe it was that -- but your gut was telling you it was something else, and as you finished your morning bath and got dressed, the conviction that there was something you needed to talk to Diarmuid about only grew.

 

But you had no idea what that could be -- after all, success was the result of many failures, or something like that. You didn't think he could be that upset over failing to catch the elusive Archer -- especially since you already had Gilgamesh to worry about, and you hadn't even figured out his class yet.

 

Though it might be wise to have Herrington look into any legends about Gilgamesh, at least -- that might even give you insight into his class or what his noble phantasm could be.

 

But when you stretched out your senses, Herrington was nowhere to be found. Neither was the car -- you even peaked out your window to be certain, and it had indeed disappeared from the driveway.

 

Wondering if that meant Diarmuid had gone off somewhere as well, you reached out your senses for him -- relieved when you could feel his presence in one of the rooms of the farmhouse.

 

He seemed to still be asleep, which made you wonder how early it was. It had been that sort of light grey that the world turned just before dawn when you woke up, and now the sun seemed to be just peaking over the horizon, but that didn't tell you much about the time.

 

If Herrington was gone, and Diarmuid was still sleeping, it seemed the best thing you could do would be to go hunting for spirits yourself. You'd tried the night before, but your confrontation with Gilgamesh had left you tired, and you'd only fallen asleep on your windowsill.

 

Now, you bundled yourself up in your blanket again, leaning out the window as far as you could without running the risk of falling, and closed your eyes.

 

Doing this was always like suddenly growing wings, like falling only to find that there was no land to crash into, and it was only a moment before you felt yourself sailing away from your tower. You didn't look back -- if you saw your own body, sometimes it made it difficult to stay like this, and it would take a while to calm down enough to try again. Instead, you went careening towards London.

 

There were a few good places for summoning around town -- the main one being the Tower of London itself, though that was a place you generally avoided. There wasn't much that could hurt you when you were like this, but angry, resentful ghosts were one of them, and you always worried you'd run into something dangerous when you got too close to the Tower of London.

 

And there was really anywhere along the Thames, although that would be a lot of work if you didn't narrow things down a bit. The best thing to do to start with seemed to be to hover up as high as you could go, and try and pinpoint any lingering traces of energy from summoning rituals.

 

Or current ones -- a strong magical energy pinged you from somewhere in Deptford, and you found yourself approaching it more warily than you should have. As you got closer, you felt the unmistakable aura of a Servant . . . and the same dusty smell you remembered from summoning Diarmuid.

 

So it wasn't just a summoning taking place, but a Servant waiting in ambush to take them down as well. Unsure what sort of abilities this enemy Servant might have, you lingered in what shadows you could find, holding your breath like it might prevent them from hearing you.

 

A woman was crouched on the roof of one of the disused houses; her hair was the same pale, glittering light as her strangely shaped bow, and her face seemed like the kind of face that was more at ease with a jolly smile than the intent focus she wore now. But most of the energy emanating from her came from the small bear at her side. You weren't sure that the bear was stronger than her, but it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what was going on, as though the mana around her had gotten tangled together.

 

You looked around, trying to see if you could catch sight of her Master, but your eyes kept catching on the summoning ritual that was taking place across the street. It was taking longer than it should have, as though the one performing it couldn't quite commit to the action, or as though they were struggling to provide the necessary mana.

 

Indeed, at this rate, it seemed like they might bleed out, and they still weren't done. Hovering closer, careful to avoid drifting into plain sight, you peered at them curiously.

 

A slim young man -- perhaps even a boy, surely younger than you by at least a decade -- with shaggy white hair that had grown damp with perspiration, was kneeling in front of the summoning circle, where the energy of the summoning hovered, as though it was unsure how to proceed. His face was twisted up, golden eyes hazy with effort and pain, and his fingers were digging into a long, jagged cut in his own arm.

 

"Come __on__ ," he was mumbling, "Just work. Just accept me as your Master, please. __Please__ , I need you. . . ."

 

You glanced over your shoulder at who you could only assume was Archer; her eyes were narrowed, and she seemed to be at war with herself.

 

It would be most beneficial for her to shoot this man now, before he could summon his Servant -- at least, that's how you thought it would work. Catching your opponent in the middle of summoning was never something you'd considered yourself doing, especially since, well, you were under house arrest.

 

But perhaps that's why your parents had sent you to Ireland, so no one would be able to interrupt your summoning ritual like this.

 

"Are you my Master?" the energy in the circle seemed to be saying, "But that's . . . wrong. . . ."

 

"Please," the young man was saying; he'd hunkered down into a heap, pressing his face into the ground like he was putting all he had into begging, "Please, I need a strong Servant. I need you, Saber. Please."

"Why?" you asked, but of course there was no way for him to hear you. All you could do was watch on as he pleaded with this hesitant spirit, and keep a wary eye on the Archer on the other roof.

 

"My skills won't be as good this way," the spirit said; this time, she spoke clearly enough that you could hear her, could feel her attention on you, and you looked back at her.

 

"Oh, I'm not your Master," you said.

 

She was a young girl, perhaps the same age as the boy trembling in the dirt, with dirty blond hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and a serious expression in her green eyes, and her red armor seemed too heavy for her scrawny frame, as though she were trying to take on responsibilities she'd never been taught how to handle.

 

"I will be too much for him to handle summoning," she said, "His mana circuits aren't strong enough . . . and I don't know that I'll be strong enough to defend him from that."

 

She jerked her chin at the Archer on the rooftop. You followed her gaze, as though you didn't know exactly what she was talking about.

 

"Well, a little strategy can go a long way," you offered, trying to be helpful but not sure how much help you could be. Especially since you weren't an ally, either, but another enemy.

 

"You have a Servant as well, do you not?" the spirit asked, "Let's be allies."

 

"I don't know if he can hold on until Di- Lancer gets here," you replied, "I'm not sure how quickly Lancer can travel."

 

"And I can't ask you to use a command spell," the woman turned her gaze from you, fixating on the Archer on the rooftops.

 

"He won't stop until you let yourself be summoned, either," you said, "There's no room to hesitate."

 

The knight -- for that's what she must have been -- still seemed to be considering the dilemma; she chewed at her lower lip. Seconds seemed to drag into hours, but it was only a few moments before she turned to you again.

 

"Can you distract them long enough for your Servant to back us up?" she asked.

 

You don't know quite why you said yes -- maybe you felt a kinship towards her, when she was so clearly struggling to fill in for someone bigger than she was, when she was trapped, when her existence put someone close to her in danger. Maybe you just weren't used to telling people no.

 

But you nodded, slowly and solemnly, "I can try."

 

"I will be in your debt, Master of Lancer," she said, and then there was a bright flash of light behind you.

 

You flung out all of your heart through the thing connection between you and Diarmuid -- tender and stretched, looping as it was through the wards of your tower and then back out again -- and called him to this shabby, rundown street.

 

And then you pulled what mana you could through those wards, as quickly as you could; as the girl materialized behind you, you pulled a gale down through the streets; brief, but strong enough to force Archer to cover her eyes with the crook of her arm, allowing the Heroic Spirit behind you to heave her Master over her shoulder and duck behind the walls.

 

She was already berating him, "What made you think it was a good idea to summon me in broad daylight?"

 

The poor boy was too busy struggling to catch his breath to answer; as you slipped into the shadows, pulling your mana to you from the body you'd left behind metaphorical bars, you sent out another desperate call to Diarmuid, though you didn't have anything more to give him than an image of the neighborhood.

 

"I can't see you anymore," the knight you were helping said, and then, fervently, as though she were begging, "Stay with us, please. For as long as you can."

 

You slipped into the shadows of the nearest house, keeping a careful eye on Archer; she seemed to have composed herself, drawing her bow and aiming straight at the house where the knight and her Master were hiding.

 

The chances the Archer could just blast through the walls were pretty high.

 

You reached down, pushing as much energy as you could into picking up a rock; and then mimed throwing it at Archer a few times, until you were sure you could get enough force behind it to send it skittering to her roof.

 

Then you let it fly, hoping beyond hope that it would work.

 

Archer stopped; slowly, she glanced to the side, towards where you were still hopefully hidden by the shadows, and you crouched down, pulling again at the mana in your body, though between the wards and the distance you weren't quite sure what you had to work with.

 

Memories of ghosts and benches rose unbidden in your mind, but you pushed them back. It wasn't the same now. You hadn't done nearly the same kind of stunts, and weren't going to.

 

You picked up another rock. Archer cocked her bow, no longer completely focused on the Servant and Master she'd come here to hunt.

 

It suddenly occurred to you that you hadn't thought through this part completely; the next step in your plan had been to throw a rock from somewhere completely different from your current location, but you were stuck here, terrified that Archer would pinpoint you and shoot.

 

Could you survive a shot like that, as long as your physical body was safe at home? You might not have seen what Archer was capable of yet, but you doubted it was something you wanted to see, either.

 

Closing your eyes, you pulled at the mana flowing to you, like a clever solution might present itself if you had more power, and felt something else -- a chill covering your body, like you'd been dropped into a cold lake without warning, or someone had stepped over your grave.

 

Diarmuid was terrified -- and close. You could feel him approaching now, waves of fear sweeping over you as he leapt over rooftops, getting closer and closer, his path towards you lit up by the dawn light.

 

You could almost hear him saying your name.

 

Bolstered by his presence, you lifted the rock high over your head, hurling it with all the strength you could summon into this ethereal body, and then scrammed, ducking around the corner of the house, just as Archer fired.

 

A blast of light sped into the wall of another house, leaving a crater in it that was easily large enough for you to fit in.

 

There was an angry roar; it could only belong to Diarmuid, the voice of a man possessed by the thought of losing that which he held most dear.

 

You peaked around the corner of the house to see him swinging one spear at Archer's head; she was crouched down low, bringing the bow up to fire at him point blank, and he was bringing his other spear up, to block or maybe cut her weapon in two, when the knight you'd helped earlier leapt up into the air, even with the roof at first, and then soaring higher, twisting in the air to draw her sword and bring it down --

 

The roof seemed to shatter.

 

You really hoped no one lived there, but there wasn't much time to dwell on that fact; both Diarmuid and Archer were leaping away from the destruction Saber -- it had to be Saber, and suddenly you remembered that the young Master had even called her as such, before she'd even been summoned -- had left in the wake of her sword strike.

 

Saber herself landed gracefully on the peak of the roof, taking a few steps while she watched the battle below, gauging her next move.

 

That reminded you of something else though -- the sorry state of the other Master. It might not have been in your best interests, but you couldn't sit by while he drained himself dry trying to support a Servant who was apparently out of his class. He should have been only a few houses over, and you ducked around the buildings, skidding to a stop as he came into view.

 

He was probably still in school, though he wasn't wearing a uniform. You weren't actually sure what day it was, though -- you'd have to ask Herrington later -- so maybe it wasn't a school day. Crouching down, you assessed him -- heavy breathing, pale face, his eyes standing out like bruises even though they were closed.

 

You weren't sure if it was just the mana at this point either -- his arm was still bleeding, seeping painfully slowly. Maybe it was nothing -- maybe the wound was simply starting to clot or something like that, but you also wondered if it was something worse -- like he was running out of blood to lose, or anemic or . . . .

 

Well, it's not like you had any reason to know about medicine. You suddenly wish you did, though; that Herrington had provided you with medical textbooks as well as magic grimoires.

 

The only thing you could provide him was more mana, though, and painfully slowly; pressing your hands against his chest, you willed his body to accept your mana. When that didn't work, your fingers found his bloody arm.

 

You were just a being made of energy right now; if there was an opening like this, it shouldn't be difficult for you take advantage of, and you poured as much energy as you could into him, as quickly as possible.

 

For a moment, it seemed like this would be a loss too, and then he started, his whole body jerking as he came back to consciousness.

 

"Who's there?" he croaked out, but he seemed to dismiss the thought quickly; his uninjured hand, fingertips still bloody from where they'd worried at his arm, scrambled out, seeking the support of the house behind him so he could pull himself into a sitting position.

 

He was already at work utilizing your mana, forcing the wound in his arm to close before your eyes, and with it your ability to help him. Then he set up ripping his shirt into pieces so he could bandage it, reaching up to wipe at his forehead, and then lurching onto his knees.

 

Something about this guy worried you. . . but he seemed content to check that the summoning had been successful, as though he had no recollection of any of Saber's scolding.

 

She'd have to start from the beginning, you supposed. In any case, you joined him in taking a peak at the battle outside.

 

Archer seemed to be on the retreat, but neither Diarmuid nor Saber had let up; Saber had gone around as much as she could in order to prevent Archer from taking advantage of a clear path back, and Diarmuid kept up a steady stream of blows; almost every other swing seemed to be aimed at breaking her crescent moon shaped bow, and she was having none of that, throwing all of her energy and effort into dodging.

 

As you prepared to creep closer, she disappeared into shimmering golden light, and Diarmuid and Saber both stopped their assault. No longer worried about attracting attention, you dashed forward, about to wrap your arms around Diarmuid.

 

When you tried, you just faded right through him, stumbling to keep yourself from crashing through the cobblestones of the street.

 

When you looked back, it was to see him facing off against Saber. Saber was breathing heavily, and at first you thought it was going to turn into a massacre, but when she ducked her head to Diarmuid, he seemed to take that as a truce, spinning his lances to his side, and allowing them to disappear to wherever such things went.

 

"Thank you for the assist," Saber was saying, "I don't know what we'd have done without you. Your Master is a generous sort."

 

It was Diarmuid's turn to duck his head, "I'm honored by your words."

 

Saber's face split into an enormous, beaming grin, like she'd never heard that her words could bring anyone honor before, but she quickly schooled her features into a more solemn expression, "We're in your debt, Lancer."

 

Diarmuid nodded in acknowledgment, then turned away from both yourself and Saber, "I need to return to my Master now. Will yours be safe. . . ?"

 

"I'll take care of him," Saber replied, "Next time we meet, he'll be at full strength."

 

With that, she leapt to the rooftops again, up and over, presumably to settle beside her Master.

 

Diarmuid sighed, looking up at the sky, and spoke clearly, "[Name], if you're still here. . . it's time for you to go home. It's not safe to wander around like this."

 

And then he followed Mordred's example, leaping into the air and making his way home.

 

Taking a deep breath, you allowed yourself to disintegrate into the breeze, drifting along with it out of London and into the clouds.

 

You already knew you were going to be exhausted when you woke up.


End file.
